
BoGk.___ 

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COFfRSGHT DEPOSIT. 



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THE 



BEGINNINGS OF HISTORY. 



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THE 



BEGINNINGS OF HISTORY 



ACCOKDING TO 



THE BIBLE AND THE TRADITIONS 
OF ORIENTAL PEOPLES. 



FROM THE CREATION OF MAN TO THE DELUGE. 



7/^ 



P 

FRANCOIS LENORMANT, 

Professor of Archeeology at the National Library of France, etc., etc. 



(Translated from the Second French Edition.) 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY FRANCIS BROWN, 
Associate Professor in Biblical, Philology, Union Theological Seminary. 



3HT. **«f^ 



•vr^ ...... e W. 






NEW YORK^^QFWA^^ 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS* 
1882 



Copyright 1882, By 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 

{All Rights Reserved.) 



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GRANT, FAIRES <fe RODGERS, 
PHILADELPHIA. 



INTRODUCTION 



The distinguished scholar, one of whose maturest works 
is now offered to English readers, is well fitted, both by early 
training and by later studies, to secure attention to whatever 
he may write. His father, Charles Lenormant, was an ac- 
complished student and professor of archaeology, and he 
himself found his native enthusiasm directed into similar 
channels when he was little more than a boy. At twenty- 
one he wrote a treatise on a problem in numismatics, which 
received the prize from the Academie des Inscriptions et 
Belles Lettres, in 1857, and from that time on he has devoted 
himself with restless zeal to investigations in many parts of 
the wide field of antiquities. His versatility, energy, rapidity 
in work and retentive memory are alike remarkable. He 
has been by turns traveler, excavator, essayist, decipherer, 
grammarian, historian, editor, instructor, and can point to 
productive labor in all these pursuits. After growing tho- 
roughly familiar with classical antiquities, he was ready, 
when the science of Assyriology began to attract general 
attention, to throw himself eagerly into this new department, 
and soon took his place among the leading Assyriologists. 
He has been always a prolific writer, and has of late years 
chosen most often such themes as had some connection with 
recent discoveries in Mesopotamia. At least two of his 
books have been translated into English : the Manual of the 
Ancient History of the East, 2 vols., London and Philadelphia, 
1869-70, the original of which was first published, in con- 

iii 



IV 



Introduction. 



neetion with E. Chevallier, in 1808-9, and, after being- 
crowned by the French Academy, has passed through many 
editions, — and Chaldccan Magic, London, 1877. He has, 
besides, frequently written for English periodicals. He is 
now in his full prime, being about forty-seven years old. 

It will be readily seen that Professor Lenormant's wide 
and long-continued studies fit him in no mean degree for a 
work like the present, whose value depends largely upon a 
full collation of the records and legends of ancient peoples, 
and whose sources of interest to the general reader are so 
unique. It appeals to a far wider circle than anything he 
had previously written. The prominent place given, in the 
title and throughout the book, to the early chapters of the 
Bible, links this volume with our own private beliefs, and 
our most fundamental and persistent ideas about society and 
the human race. But the interest attaching to any fresh 
treatment of these topics is enhanced in the present case by 
the stand-point from which they are discussed. Especial 
attention should be paid to the author's preface, in which 
he emphatically claims for himself a genuine Christian faith 
without prejudice to an untrammeled critical freedom. And 
since among ourselves the practical bearings of scholarship 
are justly held to be of the last importance, it may not be 
out of place to say that the time has long gone by when the 
religious life could afford to look askance upon critical study 
of the documents from which it is itself fed. Each year is 
teaching us more plainly that spiritual truth suffers far 
\Worse injury from any attempt on the part of its champions 
to repress or trammel reverent investigation than it ever can 
even from the excesses of radical criticism. Although Pro- 
fessor Lenormant is tar from being a rationalistic critic, yet 
it is not to be supposed that his views will be at once and 
generally accepted. Some of them may never be accepted 
at all. He holds in regard to the early chapters of Genesis 
that they represent for the most part selections from the 
stock of Shemitic traditions common to the Hebrews with the 



Introduction. v 

Babylonians, Phoenicians and their kin, but cleansed of their 
impurities, altered in their polytheistic tendencies; in a 
word, transformed into fit vehicles for spiritual instruction 
by the divine Spirit, under whose influence the Hebrew 
writers stood. Yet, however little in accord with our tradi- 
tional notions this may be, the thorough reverence manifest 
in Professor Lenormant's pages, and his full recognition 
of the spiritual advantages of Israel over its neighboring and 
kindred peoples, forbid our dismissing it without apprecia- 
tive examination. The same may be said of the details. In 
the interests of religion, to say nothing of scholarship, we 
cannot afford to reject conclusions which are put forward in 
such an unexceptionable spirit, except on rational grounds 
established as the result of temperate and candid argument. 
It must be noted that the value of the book does not depend 
upon the correctness of this or that opinion maintained in 
it. His warmest admirers will not claim for the author that 
he is always judicious. It is natural that so ardent and 
original a scholar should sometimes be incautious and hasty 
in his conclusions, and that so facile a worker should not 
always observe the greatest care in minute particulars. The 
worth of the volume, however, consists not in the safety with 
which we may take refuge in its opinions, but in the oppor- 
tunity it gives us to form just opinions of our own. In this 
point of view, the spirit of its investigations, as above de- 
scribed, is one of its two great advantages : the other is its 
full presentation of the historical and literary facts. With 
immense industry and patience, the author has collected 
materials from all available quarters, and arranged them for 
purposes of proof or illustration. To the specialist even, and 
particularly to the student of Assyriology, there cannot fail 
to be much that is instructive in the facts or their grouping, 
and the general reader of intelligence will find a mine of 
information in regard to the early traditions of all the great 
peoples of the earth, as far as these can be brought into con- 
nection, whether organic or merely formal, with the begin- 



VI 



Introduction. 



nings of the Hebrew records. These characteristics give the 
book its lasting value. 

The desire of the publishers has been simply to present 
the original work in an English dress. In accordance with 
this purpose, even where the rapid advance of discovery and 
decipherment, or the expressed judgment of many scholars, 
might have seemed to lend authority to an emendation of 
detail, this has not been resorted to. Any attempt to anno- 
tate the book would have swelled it to unwieldy proportions, 
and it was thought best to let the author speak wholly for 
himself. In the spelling of Oriental and other foreign 
names, the endeavor has been to represent the sounds cor- 
rectly to the English, as the author aimed to represent them 
to the French, ear. Under this limitation, also, the author's 
transliteration of all Shemitic words has been, with but one 
considerable exception, followed throughout. His method 
of representing the stronger Shemitic gutturals has been 
modified, partly in the endeavor to remove what seemed to 
be an occasional inconsistency in the original, but partly 
also with the hope of showing more clearly the relationship 
of words in the different languages of the family. As here 
given, 'Ayin is indicated by ' , and Cheth by h or h, according 
as it corresponded to the Arabic Ha or Ha. Initial Aleph is 
not indicated. Medial Aleph, with consonantal force, is occa- 
sionally denoted by ' , which serves to mark, also, the weak 
aspirate in Assyrian. In regard to the other consonants, it 
is necessary to say only that the original has been followed 
vJ in representing Teth by t, Ssade by g , Qoph by q, and Shin 
(in Assyrian transcriptions) by s (originally = sh, after- 
wards s). The publishers and the printers have heartily 
cooperated in the endeavor to secure accuracy in these 
respects, but all who have had experience of the typo- 
graphical difficulties in such w T orks as the present will 
understand that no claim is made of perfect freedom from 
errors, and will be indulgent towards such as thejr may 
detect 



Introduction. vii 

Much labor has been spent upon the references in which 
the book abounds. All of these have been verified, unless 
the works cited were inaccessible, which happened in a 
comparatively small number of cases. Numerous errors in 
citation have been silently corrected. The name or date 
of the edition quoted has sometimes been added in brackets. 
In a very few instances, where the reference was plainly 
wrong, and a diligent search failed to supply the means of 
rectifying it, it has been left standing, but followed by a 
bracketted interrogation-mark, thus: [?] Frequent refer- 
ences to other editions than the one named by the author, 
or to English translations of foreign books, have been added 
to those in the original ; the purpose has been not to secure 
theoretical completeness, but to facilitate the use of the book 
by English and American students. Such additions have in 
all cases been enclosed in brackets, and signed Tr. When 
the author quotes the French translation of an English 
book, the latter has generally been substituted. It is hoped 
that possible mistakes and defects in this part of the work 
will not be too severely judged. 

It remains only to add that the thanks of the public are 
due to Miss Mary Lockwood, of Washington, D. C, who has 
discharged the laborious work of translation with fidelity 
and skill. Francis Brown. 

Union Theological Seminary, N'eio York, 
October, 188:/. 



VJ 



PREFACE. 



"C'e«t icy, lecteurs, un livre de bonne foy." 

— Montaigne. 

I HAVE a right to inscribe this sentence as the heading 
of a book which was composed without any other purpose 
than that of sincere and conscientious search after scientific 
truth. By the very subject which it treats, however, this 
book directly touches questions of the utmost gravity and of 
a particularly delicate nature. Therefore I owe both to 
myself and to my reader some preliminary explanations in 
regard to the spirit in which I have approached them. It is 
important that no doubt should exist on this point, nor any 
obscurity cloud my thought. 

I am a Christian, and just now, when my belief may be a 
cause for reprobation, I am more than ever desirous to pro- 
claim it emphatically. But at the same time I am a scholar, 
and as such I do not recognize both a Christian science and 
a science of free thought. I acknowledge one science only, 
needing no qualifying epithet, which leaves theological 
questions on one side, as foreign to its domain, and accepts 
all investigators, working in good faith, whatever their reli- 
gious convictions, as equally its servants. This science it is 
to which I have devoted my life, and I should think I had 
failed in a sacred, conscientious duty, if, influenced by any 
prepossession of another order, however worthy of respect it 
might be, I should hesitate to tell the truth in all sincerity 
and simplicity, as I believe myself to have apprehended it. 
My faith rests upon too solid a foundation to be timid, and 

ix 



VJ 



x Preface. 

should I happen in the course of my researches to encounter 
an apparent antinomy between science and religion, I should 
not for a moment dream of understating or concealing it. I 
should boldly put forth the two contrary statements, certain 
beforehand that a day will come when they will attain a 
harmony which I should not have been skillful enough to 
discover. But I must add, in all sincerity, that never yet, in 
the course of a career which already reckons a quarter of a 
century given to study, have I come face to face with a 
genuine conflict between science and religion. As far as I 
am concerned, the two domains are absolutely distinct and 
not exposed to collision. There can be no quarrel between 
them, unless one encroach improperly upon the territory of 
the other. Their truths are of a different order ; they coexist 
without contradiction,^^ I shall never consent to sacrifice 
one set to the other, for I shall never find it necessary to 
attempt it. 

With special reference to Biblical questions, one series of 
which is treated in the present work, I believe firmly in the 
inspiration of the Sacred Books, and I subscribe with abso- 
lute submission to the doctrinal decisions of the Church in 
this respect. But I know that these decisions extend inspir- 
ation only to that which concerns religion, touching faith 
and practice, or, in other words, solely to the supernatural 
teachings contained in the Scriptures. In other matters, the 
human character of the writers of the Bible is fully evident. 
Each one of them has put his personal mark upon the style 
of his book. Where the physical sciences were concerned, 
they did not have exceptional light; they followed the com- 
mon, and even the prejudiced, opinions of their age. " The 
intention of Holy Scripture," says Cardinal Baronius, "is to 
teach us how to go to heaven, and not how the heavens go," 
still less how the things of the earth go, and what vicissi- 
tudes follow one another here. The Holy Spirit has not 
been concerned either with the revelation of scientific truths 
or with universal history. In all such matters, "He has 



Preface. xi 

abandoned the world to the disputes of men," tradidit mun- 
dum disputationibus eornm. 

The submission of the Christian to the authority of the 
Church, in all that relates to those teachings of faith and 
morals to be drawn from the Books of the Bible, does not 
at all interfere with the entire liberty of the scholar, when 
the question comes up of deciding the character of the nar- 
ratives, the interpretation to be accorded to them from the 
historical stand-point, their degree of originality, or the 
manner in which they are connected with the traditions 
found among other peoples, who were destitute of the help 
of divine inspiration, and lastly, the date and mode of com- 
position of the various writings comprised in the scriptural 
canon. Here scientific criticism resumes all its rights. It is 
quite justified in freely approaching these various questions, 
and - nothing stands in the way of its taking its position 
upon the ground of pure science, which demands the con- 
sideration of the Bible under the same conditions as any 
other book of antiquity, examining it from the same stand- 
points and applying to it the same critical methods. And 
we need fear no diminution of the real authority of our 
Sacred Books from examination and discussion of this 
nature, provided that it be made in a truly impartial spirit, 
as free from hostile prejudice as from narrow timidity. 

Such is the liberty that I have desired to use, and strict 
fidelity to Catholic orthodoxy did not interfere with my 
right to do so, nor do I conceive that I have exceeded ortho- 
dox limits on any point, even when I may appear to many 
most daring. 

Thus, I do not believe it possible to continue to hold the 
opinion of the so-called uaity of composition of the books 
of the Pentateuch. It is my conviction as a scholar that a 
century of external and internal criticism of the text has led 
to positive results on this point, which I have not accepted 
without demur, though finally compelled to yield to evi- 
dence. This is not at all the place to enter into a demon- 



xii Preface. 

stration of this important fact, which of itself would call for 
a large book, and which many before me have given, by- 
proofs which I could but have reproduced with merely a 
difference in the spirit of presentation. I must confine 
myself to the declaration of a sincere and well-considered 
conviction on this point, which has required for its establish- 
ment reasons all the stronger that, as I was aware, it ran 
counter to venerable tradition and to the opinion still uni- 
versal among Catholic doctors — an opinion, however, I make 
speed to add, which is not dogmatically defined, and never 
will be, for it does not belong to matters about which one 
can dogmatize. 

As is admitted to-day by the highest authorities among 
writers of the orthodox Protestant school in Germany and 
England, not less resolute defenders of revelation and of the 
inspiration of the Scriptures than the Catholics, I hold as 
fully demonstrated the distinction between the two funda- 
mental documents, Elohist and Jehovist, which served as 
sources to the final editor of the first four books of the 
Pentateuch, who has done little more than establish a sort 
of concordance between the two, while leaving their redac- 
tion intact. These two primary texts may be restored 
almost without gaps, and it is easy to point out a certain 
number of discordances between the two, similar to those 
that may likewise be observed between the different versions 
of the same event as related in two books of the Bible like 
Kings and Chronicles. We must not, however, exaggerate 
V these discordances, which bear only upon facts of an historic 
character, and not on matters essential to faith. And it is 
especially the manner in which the final editor or compiler 
has abstained, beyond a certain degree, from harmonizing 
the two texts by removing their divergences, that seems to 
me a decisive proof of the holy and inspired character which 
he already recognized in their composition. 

But this is simply a question of hoiv the books of the 
Pentateuch were formed, and, taken bv itself, reduced to its 



Preface. xiii 

essential terms, and detached from those consequences which 
too often have been made a part of it, but do not of necessity- 
flow from it, the documentary theory, as it has been called, has 
nothing in it which could not be accepted by the most scru- 
pulous orthodoxy, and I will go so far as to say that many 
Catholic doctors, perhaps without altogether admitting the 
fact to themselves, are gradually tending toward it. The 
learned theologian to whom we are indebted for a Manuel 
Biblique, recently published for a text-book in the semina- 
ries^ 1 ) acknowledges that nothing hinders the admission 
that the author of the Pentateuch "has included in his 
work, with few or no modifications, written or oral traditions 
handed down from ancient times, of whose exactness he was 
satisfied. It was quite possible for him to allow them to 
retain their distinguishing features, such as the special use 
of certain divine names, peculiar or archaic phrases and 
expressions, etc., limiting himself to an adaptation of them 
to the framework into which he desired to fit them. It is 
impossible to make any well-founded objection to this expla- 
nation." Taken in itself, the documentary theory amounts to 
no more than to extend to the whole book the use of anterior 
redactions, thus accepted as a possible thing, and to define 
the nature of these redactions. 

The distinction of the two primitive books, Elohist and 
Jehovist, combined by the final editor, where rationalistic 
criticism seems to me to have reached a plain demonstration 
which orthodox criticism may perfectly well accept, is one 
thing; quite another is the question of the date which should 
be assigned to the composition of these two original writings, 
and to their final combination in a single book. Here we 
are so far from a substantial result that each one has his own 
private system, and into the foundation of all these different 
systems enter considerations no longer belonging exclusively 
to the domain of science. For my part, I have not yet 

0) The Abbe Vigouroux, Professor of Sacred Scripture in the Seminary 
of St. Sulpice. 



VJ 



xiv Preface. 

lighted upon a single one presenting sufficiently decisive 
marks of demonstration to be adopted as scientific truth, and 
to finally subvert a tradition so ancient that independent 
criticism ought at least to take serious account of it. Con- 
sidering the question from a purely scientific stand-point, 
without any religious prepossession, it appears to me still 
undecided, and I do not believe that a definite result can be 
reached until more account is taken than heretofore of the 
new elements brought to bear upon the problem by studies 
in Egyptology and Assyriology. One single point is already, 
to my thinking, almost settled, and that by the most recent 
criticism, contrary to long-received opinion, and that is 
that the Jehovist, whatever may be his exact date, is 
considerably older than the Elohist ; that his work actually 
represents the very earliest book relating to the begin- 
nings of Israel, its exodus from Egypt and its sojourn in the 
desert. 

But in these questions of dates and authors, criticism has 
the right to claim absolute liberty. It is confronted with a 
tradition which it cannot lightly put aside ; it does not en- 
counter a formal dogma. Whatever the results which it 
may reach, provided these results have a certain and gen- 
uinely-scientific character, there is no reason to fear them. 
We must learn to bring the same breadth of view to this 
study as did the old Fathers, especially St. Jerome, when he 
wrote : " Sive Mosen dicere volueris auctorem Peutateuchi, sive 
Esdram ejusdem inskiuratorem operis, non recuso." Even 
should we end by establishing the fact that the Pentateuch, 
under the definite form that we possess, does not date back 
farther than the return from the Captivity, the religious 
authority of the Sacred Books in all essentials need not, 
therefore, suffer in the eyes of Christians. It is a matter of 
faith that the divine inspiration was preserved in the Syna- 
gogue until the coming of Christ, and that consequently the 
character of the supernatural help received by the authors 
of the Biblical writings does not depend upon the fixing of 



Preface. xv 



their date. Whether recent or remote, they occupy the 
same position for the believer. 

Christian doctrine makes in the Bible a distinction be- 
tween two different things, revelation and inspiration. 
Everything in the Book is inspired, but not everything is 
revelation. Inspiration in no way excludes the use of docu- 
ments of a human character, the acceptance, by the authors, 
of ancient popular traditions, spontaneously formed in the 
course of the ages, common to the Hebrews and to the 
nations whose only help lay in the natural lights of man- 
kind, nations given over to the errors of polytheism. 

How then should the first chapters of Genesis be regarded? 
As a revealed account, or as a human tradition, preserved 
by inspired writers as the most ancient record of their race? 
This is the problem which I have been led to examine in 
comparing the narrations of the Sacred Book with those 
current long ages before the time of Mosheh among nations 
wdiose civilization dated back into the remote past, with 
whom Israel was surrounded, from among whom it came 
out. As far as I myself am concerned, the conclusion from 
this study is not doubtful. That which we read in the first 
chapters of Genesis is not an account dictated by God Him- 
self, the possession of which was the exclusive privilege of 
the chosen people. It is a tradition whose origin is lost in 
the night of the remotest ages, and which all the great 
nations of western. Asia possessed in common, with some 
variations. The very form given it in the Bible is so closely 
related to that which has been lately discovered in Babylon 
and Chaldaea, it follows so exactly the same course, that it 
is quite impossible for me to doubt any longer that it has the 
same origin. The family of Abraham carried this tradition 
with it in the migration which brought it from Ur of the 
Chaldees into Palestine, and even then it was doubtless 
already fixed, either in a written or an oral form, for beneath 
the expressions of the Hebrew text in more than one place 
there appear certain things which can be explained only as 



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xvi Preface. 

expressions peculiar to the Assyrian language, as, for 
instance, the play of words in Genesis xi. 4, which clearly 
has its source in the analogy of the words zikru, "remem- 
brance, name," and zikurat, "tower, pyramid with stories," in 
the last-named idiom. The Biblical writers, in recording this 
tradition at the beginning of their books, created a genuine 
archaeology, in the sense attached to the word by the 
Greeks. The first chapters of Genesis constitute a "Book 
of the Beginnings," in accordance with the stories handed 
down in Israel from generation to generation, ever since the 
times of the Patriarchs, which, in all its essential affirma- 
tions, is parallel with the statements of the sacred books 
from the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris. 

But, if this is so, I shall perhaps be asked, Where then do 
you find the divine inspiration of the writers Avho made this 
archaeology — that supernatural help by which, as a Christian, 
you must believe them to have been guided ? Where ? In 
the absolutely new spirit which animates their narration, 
even though the form of it may have remained in almost 
every respect the same as among the neighboring nations. 
It is the same narrative, and in it the same episodes succeed 
one another in like manner; and yet one would be blind 
not to perceive that the signification has become altogether 
different. The exuberant polytheism which encumbers these 
stories among the Chaldaeans has been carefully eliminated, 
to give place to the severest monotheism. What formerly 
expressed naturalistic conceptions of a singular grossness, 
here becomes the garb of moral truths of the most exalted 
and most purely spiritual order. The essential features of 
the form of the tradition have been preserved, and yet be- 
tween the Bible and the sacred books of Chaldaea there is 
all the distance of one of the most tremendous revolutions 
which have ever been effected in human beliefs. Herein 
consists the miracle, and it is none the less amazing for being 
transposed. Others may seek to explain this by the simple, 
natural progress of the conscience of humanity ; for myself, 



Preface. xvii 

I do not hesitate to find in it the effect of a supernatural 
intervention of divine Providence, and I bow before the God 
who inspired the Law and the Prophets. 

It did not enter into the plan of my book to examine the 
problem, perhaps forever insoluble, as to how much in this 
tradition is actual fact, and how much symbolic. I wished 
to occupy myself only with the origin and the universal 
character of its narratives. But if the result of the facts 
which we have grouped should lead to the extension beyond 
what is usual of the part taken by allegory and symbol, here 
again the latitude of interpretation allowed by orthodoxy is 
so great that Faith has nothing to fear from the researches 
of science. The school of Alexandria in general, and Origen 
in particular, in the first centuries of the Church^ interpreted 
the first chapters of Genesis in the allegorical sense ; in the 
sixteenth century, the great Cardinal Cajetan revived this 
system, and, bold as it may appear, it has never been the 
object of any ecclesiastical censure. 

I owed these explanations to those whose belief I share, 
and whom it would give me much pain to scandalize, even 
in making use of my indisputable rights. As to the pure 
rationalists, it will disturb me but little should they smile at 
these scruples, which do not affect them. To such as they 
I have but a single remark to make : This is a scientific 
book; read it, and find a single point where my Christian 
convictions have embarrassed me, and proved an obstacle to 
the liberty of my research as a scholar, or where they may 
have prevented me from adopting the well-ascertained 
results of criticism. 

I make no pretension to infallibility. I expect to have 
my book raise numerous discussions, and to have it assailed 
from very different stand-points. Doubtless mistakes and 
errors will be pointed out in it. They were inevitable in so 
extended a course of research, bearing upon so many difficult 
subjects. But, at least, what I think even the severest censors 
will have to recognize is the fact that the study has been 



xviii Preface. 

conscientiously pursued, and on thoroughly scientific prin- 
ciples. I may have deceived myself, but I have done so 
always in perfect good faith, and while on my guard, to the 
best of my ability, against bondage to a system. 

In regard to the typographical errors which the volume 
may contain, I beg the indulgence of the reader, requesting 
him to take into account the special difficulties in its print- 
ing. Here again I have endeavored to do my best, and I 
must in justice say the same for my printer and publisher. 



\J 



ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Introduction iii 

ix 



THE BIBLICAL ACCOUNT. 



Preface 



I. The Creation (Elohist form) 1 

II. The Creation of Man and Woman (Jehovist form) . . 7 

III. The First Sin (Jehovist form) 10 

IV. Qain and Habel and the Race of Qain (Jehovist form) 14 
V. The Race of Sheth (Elohist version) 19 

VI. The Children of God and the Children of Man (Jeho- 
vist source) 23 

VII. The Deluge (combination of the two versions, Jehovist 

and Elohist) 24 

VIII. The Curse of Kena'an (Jehovist source) 36 

IX. The Peoples descended from Noah (Elohist source) . 38 

X. The Tower of Babel (Jehovist version) 42 

XL The Origin of the Terahites (Elohist version) .... 44 

XII. The Migration of the Terahites (Elohist version) ... 46 



COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE BIBLICAL AC- 
COUNT AND OF PARALLEL TRADITIONS. 

CHAPTER I. THE CREATION OF MAN. 

Conception of the autochthony of the first men among the 

ancients 47 

Phoenician traditions 48 

Libyan traditions 48 

Egyptian traditions 48 

xix 



xx Table of Contents, 

PAGE 

Man formed of clay 49 

Man at first inert, subsequently animated by a divine breath 50 
Various original versions that have come down to us of the 

Chaldseo-Assyrian Genesis „ 53 

The god Ea, creator of man 55 

Adiuru, the first man, according to the Chaldeeans . . . . 57 

Myth of Prometheus, the former of man 57 

Earlier conception among the Greeks of a spontaneous gen- 
eration of men . 58 

Men issued from the trunks of trees, in the conceptions of a 

large number of nations 58 

The Creation in the doctrines of Iranian Mazdasism .... 59 

Gayomaretan, the first man, the typical man, and his story 60 

Birth of Mashya and Mashyana 61 

Idea of the primordial androgyn, separated into two to form 

the first pair 61 

It exists in the Biblical account 64 

High moral signification given it therein, as a symbol of the 

indissolubility of the marriage tie 65 

CHAPTER II.— THE FIRST SIN. 

Conception of the Edenic felicity of the first men among the 

Egyptians 67 

Among the Aryan nations 67 

Their theory of the four ages of humanity 68 

Absence of such a theory in the Bible 70 

Contradictory to that of original sin 71 

It implies an idea of deterioration and continued decadence 72 
V Biblical and Christian belief has engendered, on the con- 
trary, the doctrine of the continued progress of humanity 73 

Original s sin in the beliefs of Zoroastrianism 76 

The sin of Yima 77 

The sin of Mashya and Mashyana 78 

The sin of Idhunna in the Scandinavian Edda 80 

Mistake of G. Smith, who fancied that he had found a Chal- 

dsean account of the first sin 81 

It is nevertheless probable that something of this kind 

existed in the traditions of Chaldsea 82 

The Tree of Life on Babylonian and Assyrian monuments . 83 



Table of Contents. xxi 

PAGE 

The Trees of Life of the Indians, the Iranians and the Sa- 

basans 84 

The Tree of Life related to the Soma or Haoma plant ... 86 

The Palm the Tree of Life in one section of Chaldaea .... 90 

The fragrant vine of the Sabseans 91 

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil 93 

The simulacra of the Tree of Life among the Chaldaeo-Assy- 

rians and the Asherah of the populations of Palestine . . 96 
Babylonian cylinder which seems to refer to a myth analo- 
gous to the Biblical account of the first sin 98 

Traces of a similar myth among the Phoenicians 99 

The man and woman beside the serpent-tree on the sarco- 
phagus upon which is sculptured the story of Prometheus 100 
Phoenician vase from Cyprus with the tree and the serpent . 101 
The spirit of this tradition in Ghaldea and Phoenicia cannot 

be identical with that of the Bible 103 

The myths of the cosmic Tree and the fiery fruit 104 

The Bible transforms the physical myth into a spiritual and 

moral lesson 105 

The serpent in the religious symbolism of antiquity .... 107 
The serpent the enemy of the celestial deities in Egypt and 

Phoenicia 108 

In Zoroastrianism 109 

The serpent of the storm in the Vedas Ill 

Traces of the same symbol among the Hebrews 112 

More general and elevated meaning of the struggle of the 

celestial deities with the serpent 112 

Transformation here effected by the Bible in a symbol origi- 
nally naturalistic 115 

CHAPTER III. THE KERUBIM AND THE REVOLVING SWORD. 

The Aryanist school in Biblical exegesis 117 

Upsetting of the greater part of its theories through the stu- 
dies of Assyriologists 118 

This school's interpretation of the kerubim . 119 

They are really the bulls with human faces at the gates of 

the Assyrian palaces 120 

These bulls, according to Chaldeo-Assyrian ideas, are guardian 

genii I 121 



xxii Table of Contents. 



VJ 



PAGE 

Sometimes they receive the name of Ttirubi 126 

The vision of the Merkabah in the prophecy of Yehezqel . . 127 

Its plastic illustration on an Assyrian cylinder 127 

The kerubim with several faces 130 

Obscurity of the question as regards the kerubim of the Ark 

of the Covenant 132 

The kerubim watch at the gates of Gan-'Eden as do the 

kirubi beside the Assyrian palaces 136 

The lahat hahereb hammithhappeketh ; it stands alone . . . 137 

The analogy with the wheels of the kerubim of Yehezqel . . 138 

It is located in the air between the two kerubim 139 

Its resemblance to the tchakra of India 140 

Mention of a similar weapon in the hand of the gods in 

ancient Chaldsean poetry 140 

The word lahat in * Hebrew, littu in Assyrian 143 

CHAPTER IY. — TffE FRATRICIDE AND THE FOUNDATION OF THE 
FIRST CITY, 

Symbolic nomenclature of the months, in connection with 

cosmogonic myths, in Babylonia and Assyria 146 

The month of Brick-making 147 

Which is also the month of the Twins and corresponds to the 

zodiacal sign of Gemini 149 

Universality of the legends which connect the foundation of 

a city with a fratricide 149 

Romulus and Remus 149 

History of Agamecles and Trophonios 150 

Roman legend of the foundation of the Capitol 151 

Legends of Mount Cronios in Olympia 152 

The fratricide of the Corybantes 153 

The fratricide of the Cabiri 154 

Traditions which make the Cabiri the first men ...... 155 

Two or three brothers 158 

Qain regarded as a Cabirus 159 

Technites in Sanchoniathon 160 

The Cabiric Adam of Samothracia 162 

Prometheus and Aitnaios Cabiri in the Boeotian Thebes . . 163 

The Dioscuri, or the Cabiri in th.e sign of Gemini 164 

Consecration of the month of Brick-making to the god Shin 166 



Table of Contents, xxiii 

PAGE 

Antagonism of the two divine brothers, Shin and Adar 
(Sandan) 166 

Probable relation of the myths which have been passed in 
review 170 

Their high religious value 170 

In the tradition of the fratricide, the Chaldgeans, like the 

Romans, undoubtedly sympathized with the murderer . . 173 
Connection of the preference given by Yahveh to the sacri- 
fice of Habel over that of Qain with the legal prescrip- 
tions of the sacrifices 174 

Sin "holding itself in ambush;" study of the expression . 175 
Other expressions of the narrative, which recall the Chaldseo- 
Babylonian versions 177 

CHAPTER V. THE SHETHITES AND THE QAINITES. 

The genealogies of the descendants of Sheth and of Qain, 
sprung from two different sources 181 

Refutation of the theory which insists that primitively the 
Jehovist redactor made Noah the descendant of Qain . . 183 

Parallelism and resemblance of the two genealogies .... 184 

They were artificially and contemporaneously constructed, 
for the sake of contrast 186 

Dryness and systematic reduction to a dead level of the 
Shethite genealogy, which comes from the Elohist docu- 
ment 186 

Preservation of the legendaiy physiognomy of the primitive 
traditions in the genealogy of the Qainites, adopted from 
the Jehovist document 187 

The two wives of Lemek 188 

Their original mythic character and the way in which they 
have been deprived of it 188 

Condemnation of the polygamy associated with them in the 
Bible 190 

Condemnation of the custom of personal vengeance in 
another trait of the history of Lemek 191 

Barbarous song attributed to him 191 

The three sons of Lemek and their character as inventors of 
the arts 195 

Formation of names of these personages 196 



xxiv Table of Contents. 



VJ 



PAGB 



Their parallels in the Phoenician narratives of Sanchonia- 

thon 198 

Refutation of the theory which sees in them ancient divinities 203 

Of that which makes them types of castes 210 

The three sons of Lemek are ethnic personifications, like 

those of Noah 212 

The sons of 'Adah and the people of 'Ad 213 

Tubal-qain and the people of Tubal 214 

The peoples excluded from tbe descent of the sons of Noah 

in Genesis 215 

Characteristics of greater antiquity in the Jehovist redaction 

as compared with the Elohist redaction 217 

CHAPTER VI. THE TEN ANTEDILUVIAN PATRIARCHS. 

Unity of the ancient traditions of widely diverse nations in 
the legend of ten generations of primordial ancestors . . 218 

The ten antediluvian kings of Berossus 219 

Table of their parallelism with the ten antediluvian patri- 
archs of the Bible 220 

Commentary on this table 221 

The ten primitive kings of Assyria 229 

The ten hero-ancestors of Armenia 229 

The ten Paradhatas of Iranian tradition 230 

Other instances of this record of ten ancestors 230 

Ten used as a round number in the genealogies of Ge?iesis . 232 
Trace of a primitive time when numeration did not exceed 

ten 233 

Variations between ten and seven for the round number of 

primordial ancestors 236 

ChaldaBan theory regarding the duration of the ten antedilu- 
vian reigns 237 

Each one is made to correspond to a zodiacal sign 239 

Testimony of classic antiquity to prove that the zodiacal 
Water-carrier is Deucalion-Xisuthros ......... 242 

The Babylonian calendar and the names of its months con- 
nected both with the signs of the Zodiac and cosmogonic 

myths 243 

The creation of man associated with the second month of the 
year and the sign of the Bull 246 



Table of Contents. xxv 

PAGE 

The first month that of the creation of the Universe .... 247 

Reference to what was said in a preceding chapter of the 
third month, its zodiacal sign and its tradition of the foun- 
dation of the city and the fratricide 252 

Methushelah, the man armed with the dart, corresponding 
to the month and sign of Sagittarius 253 

The 365 years of the life of Hanok 253 

Other cyclic numbers in connection with his name .... 255 

Legends about Hanok 259 

Comparison with the Babylonian Marduk 259 

Astronomic and calendric meaning of the succession of pro- 
tecting divinities of the different months among the Chal- 
dseo-Babylonians 261 

Idea of a similar evolution, but in the moral order, involved 
in the Shethite genealogy in the Bible 266 

The calendrical construction thus traced out, though very 
ancient, is far from being primitive 268 

Passage in the Mazdsean Bundehesh 272 

Difficulty of explaining in Berossus the distribution among 
the ten antediluvian kings of the partial numbers of dura- 
tion, of which the total has a certain cyclical character . 274 

The ciphers of antediluvian genealogies in the Bible and 
their uncertainty 277 

Conjecture in regard to the ancient total estimate of the 
antediluvian period 278 

Theory of Oppert upon the figures as they now stand in the 
Hebrew text of Genesis 282 

Systematic extension of these figures by the Septuagint and 
the principle according to which they worked 283 

Curtailment of the Hebrew figures in the Samaritan state- 
ment 287 

The problem presented by the distribution of the partial 
figures in the Biblical genealogy still insoluble 288 

Possibility of the influence of other nations beside the 
Chaldaso-Babylonians 291 

CHAPTER VII. THE CHILDREN OF GOD AND THE DAUGHTERS 

OF MEN. 

Unusual difficulties offered by this fragment of Genesis , . . 295 
Absence of a fixed tradition regarding its interpretation . . 296 



xxvi Table of Contents. 



PAGE 

System which sees in the bene haeloMm the great ones of the 

earth, and its refutation 296 

System which sees in them angels, and its adoption by the 

earliest Fathers of the Church 299 

Scruples which subsecpuently caused them to abandon this 

interpretation 301 

System which made the Shethites the children of God and 

the Qainites the daughters of men 302 

Impossibility of accepting this system from a philological 

point of view 304 

System which makes the bene haeloMm either infidels or Pre- 

adamites 308 

Supposed confirmation in the cuneiform texts 310 

The expression bene haeloMm in the Bible always designates 

angels . 317 

Belief in incubi and succubae among the Euphratico-Syrian 

nations , 321 

The Lilith 323 

The Se'irim 326 

The amorous demon in the Book of Tobit 328 

The guilty union of Djem (Yima) in the Pehlevi Bundehesh . 330 
The bene haeloMm, descending to the daughters of earth, 
recall the myths of the loves of gods and mortals, of which 

the heroes were born 332 

The gibborim, or heroes, of the Biblical narrative 332 

This account implies the existence of a cycle of heroic 
legends among the ancient Hebrews and its reprobation 

by the sacred writers 337 

Absence of a perfect conception of the absolute spirituality 

\j of angels in the Bible 341 

The giants, or nephilim ; problems suggested by their men- 
tion 343 

Etymology of their name 345 

The mention of them is only by way of fixing an epoch . . 349 
Belief in primitive giants universal among the ancients . . 351 
Idea of violence and of revolt against heaven connected with 

these giants 356 

The Gigantomachy of the Greeks a purely physical myth . 360 

The Titanomachy 361 

The myth of the Aloades 365 



Table of Contents. xxvii 



PAGE 



In what consists the originality of the Biblical account of 

the giants and heroes 368 

Traces of analogous narratives among the Chaldeeans . . . 369 

The men of the bronze age in Hesiod ....371 

The life of man cut down to 120 years by Yahveh .... 373 

Chaldeeo-Babylonian character of this number 380 

CHAPTER VIII.— THE DELUGE. 

Universality of the tradition of the Deluge among all races, 

except the black race 382 

Necessity of treating as aside from the question certain nar- 
ratives referring merely to events of a local character . . 383 
The inundation of Yao and the labors of Yu in China . . . 383 

The legend of Botchica in Cundinamarca 386 

The Chaldsean tradition of the Deluge, related by Berossus . 387 
Original account discovered by G. Smith in the Cuneiform 

tablets of the British Museum 390 

Translation of this account 392 

Double narrative of the Elohist and Jehovist documents col- 
lected in the Biblical account as we have it 404 

Comparison of this account with that of the Cuneiform docu- 
ment 406 

Systems of the different accounts regarding the duration and 

epochs of the Deluge 409 

The account of the Deluge among the Aramseans of Bambyce 

or Hierapolis 418 

The diluvian narratives of India 420 

Their Chaldsean origin 423 

Diluvian traditions of Iran 429 

The Deluge of Ogyges among the Greeks . 431 

Deucalion's Deluge 432 

Variations of local traditions 434 

System of the chronographers, allowing three successive 

deluges 438 

Diluvian traditions of Phrygia 439 

Traditions of the Celtic nations 440 

Narrative of the Scandinavian Edda 442 

Tradition of the Lithuanians 442 

Absence of the diluvian tradition in Egypt 443 

Egyptian myth of the destruction of men by the gods . . . 446 



xxviii Table of Contents. 



\j 



PAGE 



What this myth has in common with the tradition of the 

Deluge and in what respect it differs 451 

The American accounts of the Deluge . . . 452 

Mexican accounts 455 

Doubts recently suggested in regard to them 458 

Narrative of the Codex Chimalpopoca 461 

Motolinia's narrative 463 

Traditions collected by Ixtlilxochitl , 464 

Possible relationship of these Mexican narratives with those 

of India 467 

Diluvian tradition of Guatemala 469 

Tradition of Nicaragua 471 

Supposed diluvian narratives of Peru 474 

Traditions of the North American tribes 476 

Account of Cherokees 477 

Account of Tamanakis 478 

Various other narratives 478 

The diluvian traditions of Oceanica and their uncertain 

character 482 

Character of the actual event of the Deluge 486 

In what sense the universality of its tradition should be 

understood 487 



APPENDICES. 

APPENDIX I. — THE COSMOGONIC ACCOUNTS OF THE CHAL- 
DEANS, BABYLONIANS, ASSYRIANS, AND PII03NICIANS . . . 489 

I. Chaldjea, Babylonia, and Assyria 489 

A. Account of the Babylonians according to Damascius . . 489 

B. Fragment of a theogonic cuneiform tablet 489 

C. Fragments of a great cosmogonic narrative in several 

tablets or cantos, discovered by George Smith .... 490 

1. Fragment of beginning of first tablet 490 

2. Fragment belonging probably to the third tablet . . 491 

3. Fragment belonging probably to the fourth tablet . 492 

4. Fragment of the fifth tablet 493 



Table of Contents. xxix 

' PAGE 

5. Fragment of the beginning of a tablet, probably the 
seventh 497 

D. Extract from Berossus by Abydenus 499 

E. Extract from Berossus by Alexander Polyhistor .... 499 

F. Fragments of an epic narrative of the struggle of Marduk 

against Tiamat 500 

G. Fragment which seems to belong to the same narrative . 507 
H. Epic fragment of the tradition of Kuti (Cutha) concern- 
ing the first monstrous generations developed in the 
womb of the world, still in a state of chaos 508 

/. Establishment of order in the movements of the sidereal 
world and war of the seven evil spirits against the god 
Moon 510 

K. Generations of the chief divinities of the Chaldseo-Assy- 

rian religion 513 

L. Fragments relating to the three primordial triads of the 

Chaldseans 517 

M. Fragments relating to the cosmic character of the mascu- 
line and feminine principles 518 



II. Phoenicia 521 

A. Theogony of Sidon, according to Eudemius 521 

B. Phoenician cosmogony of the books of Mochos .... 521 

C. On the character of Time in the Phoenician cosmogony . 522 

D. Cosmogony of Hieronymus and Hellanicos 522 

E. First Phoenician cosmogony of the Sanchoniathon of 

Philo of Byblos 524 

F. Second Phoenician cosmogony of the Sanchoniathon of 

Philo of Byblos 527 

G. Grand theogony under the form of an epic narrative 

from the Sanchoniathon of Philo of Byblos 528 

//. Extract from the book of Philo of Byblos " On the Jeivs" 533 

/. Another version of the same extract 533 

J. Extract on Cronos 534 

K. Another extract on Cronos 534 

L. Extract on the dominion of Cronos 534 

M. Extract from Philo of Byblos' book " On the Jews" ... 534 



xxx Table oj Contents. 

PAGE 

N. Extract from Philo of By bios' book " On the Phoenician 

Letters'''' 535 

0. Extract on the cosmogonic character of the number seven 536 

III. Fragments of the Cosmogony of Pherecydes . . . 537 

General Plan . . 537 

1. Production of the Universe . 538 

2. Struggle between Cronos and Ophioneus 542 

3. Reign of Zeus and organization of the Universe . . . 54-7 

4. Struggle between Zeus and Typhon 551 

APPENDIX II.— ANTEDILUVIAN DIVINE REVELATIONS AMONG 

THE CHALDEANS 559 

APPENDIX III. — CLASSIC TEXTS RELATING TO THE ASTRO- 
NOMICAL SYSTEM OF THE CHALDEANS 567 

APPENDIX IV. — TABLES OF THE CHALD2E0-ASSYRIAN CAL- 
ENDAR AND OTHER SEMITIC CALENDARS 572 

APPENDIX V. THE CHALDEAN ACCOUNT OF THE DELUGE, 

TRANSCRIPTION OF THE TEXT WITH INTERLINEAR TRANS- 
LATION 575 



VJ 



THE 

BEGINNINGS OF HISTORY. 



THE BIBLICAL ACCOUNT. 



THE CKEATION. 

(elohist form.) 



CHAP. I. 1. In the beginning, Elohim created the 
heavens and the earth. 

2 And the earth was a desert and an empty 

chaos ; the darkness was upon the surface 
of the abyss, and the breath of Elohim 
was moving over the waters. 

3 Elohim said : "Let light be !" and light was. 

4 And Elohim saw the light, that it was good, 

and Elohim separated the light from the 
darkness. 

5 And Elohim named the light day, and the 

darkness night ; and it was evening, and 
it was morning : one day. 
1 



2 The Beginnings of History. 

6 Elohim said : " Let there be a firmament be- 

tween the waters, and let it separate the 
waters from the waters !" [And it was 
so. (>) ] 

7 And Elohim made the firmament, and sepa- 

rated the waters that are above the firma- 
ment from those that are below the firma- 
ment. [And Elohim saw the firmament, 
that it was good. ( 2 ) ] 

8 And Elohim named the firmament heaven. 

And it was evening, and it was morning : 
second day. 

9 And Elohim said : " Let the waters which 

are under the heaven gather together in 
one place, and let the dry [land] appear !" 
And it was so. 
io And Elohim named the dry [land] earth, 
and he named the gathering together of the 
waters seas. And Elohim saw that it was 
good. 

( x ) These words occur at the end of verse 7, but they are 
evidently misplaced from their original position, to which we 
have restored them, in accordance with the parallelism con- 
stantly recurring in the narration of the other acts of creation, 
and following the Septuagint version, which gives them pre- 
cisely here. 

( 2 ) The Septuagint has retained this sentence as necessary 
to the regular progress of the narrative. The Hebrew text has 
let it drop, replacing it with the sentence which originally 
ended verse 6. 



The Biblical Account. 3 

11 And Elohim said : " Let the earth produce 

verdure, the herb bearing seed, the fruit- 
tree bearing fruit after its kind, which 
may have its seed in itself upon the earth." 
And it was so. 

12 And the earth produced verdure, the herb 

bearing seed after its kind, and the tree 
bearing fruit, which has its seed in itself 
after its kind. And Elohirn saw that it 
was good. 

13 And it was evening, and it was morning: 

third day. 

14 Elohim said : " Let there be luminaries in 

the firmament of heaven, to divide the 
day from the night, and let them be the 
signs for the time of festivals, the days 
and the years, 

15 and let them be the luminaries in the firma- 

ment of heaven to give light upon the 
earth ! " And it was so. 

16 And Elohim made the two great luminaries, 

the greater luminary to preside over the 
day, the lesser luminary to preside over 
the night, and also the stars. (*) 

(!) All the probabilities indicate that primitively an addi- 
tional verse occurred here, and Schrader has not hesitated 
to restore it : 

[And Elohim named the greater luminary sun, and he 
named the lesser luminary moon.] 



VJ 



4 The Beginnings of History. 

17 And Elohim placed them in the firmament 

of heaven to give light upon the earth, 

18 and to preside over the day and the night, 

and to divide the light from dimness. 
And Elohim saw that it was good. 

19 And it was evening, and it was morning : 

fourth day. 

20 Elohim said: " Let the waters swarm with 

a living increase, and let the fowls fly over 
the earth towards the face of the firma- 
ment of heaven I" [And it was so^ 1 )] 

21 And Elohim created the great sea-monsters 

and all the living and creeping beings, 
with which the waters swarm after their 
kinds, and also all winged fowl after its 
kind. And Elohim saw that it was good. 

22 And Elohim blessed them, saying: " Be 

fruitful, multiply and fill the waters of 
the seas, and let the fowl multiply on the 
land !" 

23 And it was evening, and it was morning : 

fifth day. 

24 And Elohim said: "Let the earth produce 

living beings after their kinds, the cattle, 
the reptiles and the wild beasts of the 
earth after their kinds ! " And it was so. 



(*) Sentence omitted by the Hebrew text, but retained by 
the Septuagint version. 



The Biblical Account 5 

25 And Elohim made the wild beasts of the 

earth after their kinds, the cattle after 
their kind, and every reptile of the ground 
after its kind. And Elohim saw that it 
was good.^) 

26 Elohim said : " Let us make man in our 

image, according to our likeness, and let 
him have dominion over the fishes of the 
sea, over the fowls of the air, over the 
cattle and over all the earth ( 2 ), and over 
every reptile that creeps upon the earth ! " 

27 And Elohim created man in his image ; in 

the image of Elohim he created him ; male 
and female he created them. 

28 And Elohim blessed them, and said to them : 

" Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and 
subject it ; have dominion over the fishes 
of the sea, over the fowl of the air and 
over every living being that moves over 
the earth !" 

29 And Elohim said : " Behold, I give you all 

herb bearing seed that is upon the surface 
of all the earth, and every tree which has 

( x ) The primitive text must have contained a verse at this 
place, dropped later, which doubtless ran about as follows : — 

[And Elohim blessed them, saying : " Be fruitful, multiply 
and occupy the earth ! "] 

( 2 ) It may be surmised that originally the text read : " over 
the cattle and over all the (wild beasts of the) earth and over 
every reptile that creeps upon the earth." 



6 The Beginnings of History. 

a fruit producing seed ; that shall be food 
for you, 

30 and to every animal of the ground and to 

every fowl of the air and to every reptile 
on the earth having in itself a breath of 
life [I give (*)], all green of herbs for food." 
And it was so. 

31 And Elohim saw all that he had made, and 

behold, it was very good. And it was 
evening, and it was morning : sixth day. 
CHAP. II. 1. And the heavens and the earth 
were finished and all their host. 

2 And Elohim finished on the seventh day his 

work, which he had made ; and on the 
seventh day he rested from all his work, 
which he had made. 

3 And Elohim blessed the seventh day and 

sanctified it, because on this day he rested 
from all his work, which Elohim had cre- 
ated in making it. 

4 This is " The genealogies of the heavens and 

of the earth, when they were created." 

(i) A supplement, necessary at least in a translation. In- 
deed it is probable that the verb existed originally in the text 
and has dropped out of the sentence. 



II. 

THE CREATION OF MAN AND OF WOMAN. 

(jEHOVIST FORM.) 

CHAP. II. 4. On the day that Yahveh Elohim 
made the earth and the heavens, 

5 not a shrub of the fields was yet upon the 

earth, not a herb of the fields had yet 
sprouted, because Yahveh Elohim had not 
yet made it to rain upon the earth, and 
there was no man to cultivate the ground ; 

6 but a thick cloud rose up from the earth and 

watered all the surface of the ground. 

7 And Yahveh Elohim formed man of the 

dust of the ground, and breathed in his 
nostrils the breath of life, and man was 
made a living being. 

8 And Yahveh Elohim planted a garden in 

'Eden on the eastward side, and he placed 
there the man whom he had formed. 

9 And Yahveh Elohim made to shoot from 

the ground every tree pleasant to see and 
good to eat, and the tree of life in the 
middle of the garden, and also the tree of 
the knowledge of good and of evil. 



\J 



8 The Beginnings of History. 

10 A river came out of e Eden to water the gar- 

den, and from thence it divided to form 
four arms. 

11 The name of the one is Pishon ; it is that 

which encircles all the land of Havilah, 
where the gold is found. 

12 And the gold of that land is good ; and also 

there is found the beclolah and the stone 
shoham. 

13 And the name of the second river is Gihon ; 

it is that which encircles all the land of 
Kush. 

14 And the name of the third river is Hid- 

Deqel ; it is that which flows before As- 
shur. And the fourth river is the Phrath. 

15 Yahveh Elohim took the man and placed 

him in the garden of 'Eden (gan- c Eden) 
to cultivate it and to keep it. 

16 And Yahveh Elohim commanded the man, 

saying : "Of every tree in the garden thou 
mayst eat, 

17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good 

and of evil thou shalt not eat, for on the 
day that thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die 
of death." 

18 And Yahveh Elohim said: "It is not good 

that the man be alone ; I will make him 
a help fitting for him." 



The Biblical Account. 9 

19 And Yahveh Elohim formed out of earth all 

the animals of the field and all the fowls 
of the air, and he led them to the man to 
see how he would name them ; and ac- 
cording as the man should name a living 
being, such would be its name. 

20 And the man called by name all cattle, all 

fowl of the air and all wild beasts of the 
fields ; but for the man he did not find a 
help fitting for him. 

21 Then Yahveh Elohim made a deep sleep to 

fall upon the man, and he slept ; he took 
one of his sides, and he closed up the 
place with flesh. 

22 And Yahveh Elohim formed the side which 

he had taken from the man into a woman, 
and he led her to the man. 

23 And the man said : " Now this is bone of 

my bone and flesh of my flesh ; this shall 
be called woman (isshah) because she has 
been taken from man (ish)." 

24 This is why the man shall leave his father 

and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall 
be only one flesh. 

25 And both of them, the man and the woman, 

were naked, and they were not ashamed. 



III. 

THE FIRST SIN. 

(JEHOVIST FORM.) 

CHAP. ill. l. The serpent was more crafty than 
all the other animals of the field that 
Yahveh Elohim had made, and he said to 
the woman: "Did Elohim actually say: 
You shall not eat of any tree of the 
garden ? ' ' 

2 And the woman said to the serpent : " We 

do eat the fruits of the trees of the garden ; 

3 but as to the fruit of the tree which is in the 

middle of the garden, Elohim has said : 
"You shall not eat of it and shall not 
touch it, so as not to die." 

4 And the serpent said to the woman : " You 

will not die of death from it ; 

5 for Elohim knows that on the day when you 

eat of it your eyes will open, and you will 
be like Elohim, knowing good and evil." 

6 And the woman saw that the tree was good 

to eat and pleasant to the eyes, and that 
it was a tree to be desired to give intelli- 
gence ; and she took of the fruit and ate 
10 



The Biblical Account. ll 

of it, and she gave some to her husband, 
beside her, and he did eat of it. 

7 Then the eyes of both of them opened, and 

they knew that they were naked ; and 
they sewed fig-leaves, and made them- 
selves girdles. 

8 And they heard the voice of Yahveh Elohim, 

who was passing through the garden in the 
evening cool, and the man and the wo- 
man hid themselves from before the face 
of Yahveh Elohim, among the trees of the 
garden. 

9 Yahveh Elohim called the man to him and 

said : " Where art thou ? " 
10 And he said : "I heard thy voice in the 

garden , and I was afraid, because I am 

naked, and I hid myself." 
ii And [Yahveh Elohim^)] said: "Who has 

taught thee that thou art naked ? Of the 

tree, of which I had forbidden thee to eat, 

hast thou then eaten?" 

12 And the man said : " The woman that thou 

hast given me to be beside me, gave me 
of the tree, and I ate." 

13 And Yahveh Elohim said to the woman : 

"Why hast thou done this?" And the 

( l ) This name of God is not in the text, which only uses the 
verb in the third person, but its insertion was indispensable to 
the clearness of the translation. 



\J 



12 The Beginnings of History. 

woman said: "The serpent seduced me, 
and I ate." 

14 Yahveh Elo-him said to the serpent : " Since 

thou hast done this, thou art accursed 
among all the cattle and all the animals 
of the earth ; thou shalt go upon thy belly, 
and thou shalt eat the dust all the days 
of thy life. 

15 " I will establish an enmity between thee 

and the woman, between thy race and her 
race ; it( 1 ) shall crush thy head, and thou 
shalt wound its heel." 

16 To the woman he said : "I will increase the 

pain of thy pregnancy ; thou shalt bring 
forth thy sons in sorrow ; thy desire shall 
be toward thy husband, and he shall rule 
over thee." 

17 And to the man he said: "Since thou hast 

listened to the voice of thy wife, and hast 
eaten of the tree, of which I had forbidden 
thee to eat, accursed be the ground for thy 
sake ! Thou shalt eat by means of it in 
pain all the days of thy life ; 

18 It shall produce thorns and brambles for thee, 

and thou shalt eat the herb of the field ; 

19 Thou shalt eat thy bread in the sweat of thy 

( J ) The race of the woman and not tl le woman herself 5 the 
gender of the pronoun in the Hebrew leaves no doubt on the 
subject, and the Septuagint is here correct. 



The Biblical Account. 13 

brow, until thou return to the ground 
whence thou hast been taken ; for dust 
thou art, and to the dust shalt thou 
return." 

20 The man called his wife by the name of 

Havvah, because she was the mother of all 
the living. 

21 And Yahveh Elohim made for the man and 

for his wife tunics of skin and dressed 
them. 

22 And Yahveh Elohim said : " Behold, the 

man is become as one of us for the know- 
ledge of good and of evil ; but now, that 
he may not stretch out his hand and take 
of the tree of life, eat and live forever!" 

23 And Yahveh Elohim drove him from the 

garden of c Eden that he might cultivate 
the ground whence he was taken. 

24 Thus he put out the man, and he placed to the 

east of the garden of 'Eden the Kerubim 
and the flaming blade of the sword which 
turns, to keep the way of the tree of life. 



VJ 



IV. 

QAIN AND HABEL AND THE EACE OF QAIN. 

(JEHOVIST FORM.) 

CHAP. IV. l. And the man knew Hawaii, his 
wife ; and she conceived and gave birth 
to Qain, and she said: "I have created 
a man with the help of Yahveh f 1 )." 

2 And she again gave birth to his brother 

Habel, and Habel was a feeder of flocks, 
and Qain a cultivator of the ground. 

3 It happened after a series of days that 

Qain presented to Yahveh an offering of 
the fruits of the ground. 

4 And Habel, on his part, presented to him 

one of the first-born of his flock and of 
their fat ; and Yahveh looked upon Habel 
and his offering ; 

(!) Qain signifies properly " the creature, the offspring." 
The word appears as a substantive in this sense in the Sabean 
inscriptions of Southern Arabia (Fr. Lenormant, Lettres As- 
syriologiquesj vol. II., p. 173). For the interpretation of these 
appellations, which go back to a remote antiquity, the Hebrew 
vocabulary, as we are acquainted with it, reduced to the words 
furnished by the Bible, does not always suffice, and it is neces- 
sary to have recourse to comparison with other Semitic idioms. 
By such comparison the Assyrian informs us that Habel meant 
" son." (Oppert. Expedition en Mdsopotamie, vol. II., p. 139.) 

14 



The Biblical Account. 15 

5 But lie looked not upon Qain and his offer- 

ing, and Qain was very angry, and he 
lowered his countenance. 

6 And Yahveh said to Qain : ''Why art thou 

angry, and why hast thou lowered thy 
countenance ? 

7 " When thou hast done well, dost thou not 

lift it up? And in that thou hast not 
done well, sin lies in ambush at thy door, 
and its appetite is turned toward thee ; 
but thou, rule over it." 

8 And Qain said to his brother Habel : [" Let 

us go into the fields^)." And it hap- 
pened, when they were in the fields, 
Qain rose against Habel his brother, and 
killed him. 

9 And Yahveh said to Qain : " Where is Ha- 

bel, thy brother?" And he said: " I do 
not know. Am I the keeper of my 
brother ? " 
10 And [Yahveh ( 2 )] said: ''What hast thou 
done? The voice of thy brother's blood 
cries toward me from the soil. 

( 1 ) The Septnagint and the Samaritan text have retained 
these words, which have dropped out of the Hebrew text and 
left a void. St. Jerome has supplied them from the Greek 
version. 

( 2 ) Supplied for the sake of clearness. The text simply puts 
the verb in the third person. 



VJ 



16 The Beginnings of History. 

11 " Now thou shalt be accursed from the 

soil of the earth which has opened its 
mouth to receive the blood of thy brother 
from thy hand ; 

12 " When thou shalt cultivate the soil, it shall 

no longer give thee its produce ; and thou 
shalt be wandering and fugitive upon the 
earth." 

13 And Qaln said to Yahveh : " My crime is 

too great for me to carry the weight of it. 

14 " Behold thou dost drive me to-day from the 

surface of the soil. ( x ) I must hide my- 
self from before thy face, and I shall be 
wandering and fugitive upon the earth ; 
and it will come to pass, whosoever shall 
overtake me will slay me." 

15 And Yahveh said to him : " For this cause, 

whosoever will slay Qain vengeance will 
pay seven times." And Yahveh placed a 
mark on Qain, so that whosoever should 
overtake him would not slay him. 

16 And Qain went out from the presence of 

Yahveh, and he settled in the land of Nod 
(of exile), to the east of 'Eden. 

17 Qain knew his wife, and she conceived, and 

(*) The word adamah, " soil," is manifestly employed 
here to designate the cultivated and cultivable ground, in a 
special way, the adamic soil, as opposed to ereg, " the earth," 
in its more general meaning. 



The Biblical Account. 17 

she gave birth to Hanok ; and he built 
afterwards a city, and he named the city 
after the name of his son Han6k. 

18 And to Hanok was born c Irad, and c Irad 

begat Mehuiael, and Mehuiael begat Me- 
thushael, and Methushael begat Lemek. 

19 And Lemek took for himself two wives, the 

name of the one c Adah, and the name of 
the other Qillah. 

20 And c Adah gave birth to Yabal : he is the 

father of all those who dwell under tents 
and among the flocks. 

21 And the name of his brother was Yubal : 

he is the father of all those who play the 
kinnor and the flute. 

22 And Qillah on her part gave birth to Tubal 

the smith, forger of all instruments of brass 
and of iron ; and the sister of Tubal the 
smith was Na'amah. 

23 And Lemek said to his wives : 

" c Adah and Qillah listen to my voice ! 
" Wives of Lemek give heed to my word ! 
" For I have killed a man for my wound, 
" and a child for my bruise. 

24 "After the same manner as Qain shall be 

revenged seven times, 

" Lemek shall be seventy-seven times." 

25 And Adam knew his wife again, and she 

2 



18 The Beginnings of History. 

gave birth to a son, and she called his 
name Sheth : " Because Elohim has given 
me an offspring in the place of Habel, as 
Qain killed him." 
26 And to Sheth in his turn a son was born, 
and he called him by his name Enosh. 
Then men began to invoke by the name 
of Yahveh. 



VJ 



V. 

THE KACE OF SHETH. 
(elohist veesiou.) 

CHAP. V. l. This is the " Book of the genealogy 
of Adam." 
In the day that Elohim created man, he 
made him in the likeness of Elohim ; 

2 Male and female he created them, and he 

blessed them and named them by their 
name Adam the day they were created. 

3 And Adam lived 130 years, and he begat in 

his likeness and in his image, and he called 
him [his son (*)] by his name Sheth; 

4 And the days of Adam after the birth of 

Sheth were 800 years, and he begat sons 
and daughters ; 

5 and all the days that Adam lived were 930 

years, and he died. 

6 And Sheth lived 105 years, and he begat 

Enosh ; 

(*) The text reads simply "and lie called him by his name," 
which would be too foreign a rendering for our language. 

19 



\J 



20 The Beginnings of History. 

7 and Sheth lived after having begotten 

Enosh 807 years, and he begat sons and 
daughters ; 

8 and all the days of Sheth were 912 years, 

and he died. 

9 And Enosh lived 90 years and he begat 

Qenan ; 

10 and Enosh lived 815 years after having be- 

gotten Qenan, and he begat sons and 
daughters ; 

11 and all the days of Enosh were 905 years, 

and he died. 

12 And Qenan lived 70 years, and he begat 

Mahalal'el ; 

13 and Qenan lived 840 years after having be- 

gotten Mahalal'el, and he begat sons and 
daughters , 

14 and all the days of Qenan were 910 years, 

and he died. 

15 And Mahalal'el lived 65 years, and lie begat 

Yered ; 

16 and Mahalal'el lived 830 years after having 

begotten Yered, and he begat sons and 
daughters ; 

17 and all the days of Mahalal'el were 895 

years, and he died. 

18 And Yered lived 162 years and he begat 

Hanok ; 



The Biblical Account. 21 

19 and Yered lived 800 years after having be- 

gotten Hanok, and he begat sons and 
daughters ; 

20 and all the days of Yered were 962 years, 

and he died. 

21 And Hanok lived 65 years and begat Me- 

thushelah ; 

22 and Hanok, after having begotten Methush- 

elah, walked with God( l ) 300 years, and 
he begat sons and daughters ; 

23 and all the days of Hanok were 365 years ; 

24 and Hanok walked with God, and he was 

no more, for Elohim took him. 

25 And Methushelah lived 187 years and be- 

gat Lemek ; 

26 and Methushelah lived 782 years after hav- 

ing begotten Lemek, and he begat sons 
and daughters ; 

27 and all the days of Methushelah were 969 

years, and he died. 

28 And Lemek lived 182 years, and he begat a 

son ; 

29 and he named him Noah, saying : "He will 

comfort us for our weariness and the toil of 



(!) I have translated "God" and no longer Elohim where 
the divine Name is preceded by the article, which makes it a 
noun of excellence, hcVelohhn, " the God," the only God. 



22 The Beginnings of History. 

our hands, proceeding from this ground 
that Yahveh has cursed.'^ 1 ) 
so And Lemek lived 595 years after having 
begotten Noah, and he begat sons and 
daughters ; 

31 and all the days of Lemek were 777 years, 

and he died. 

32 And Noah was 500 years old when he begat 

Shem, Ham and Yapheth. 

( l ) The last editor appears at this point to have taken up 
a verse of the genealogy of Sheth from the Jehovist document, 
of which he has preserved the two first verses above, suppress- 
ing the others, using this as though to supplement the Elohist 
document which he had adopted. 



\J 



VI. 



THE CHILDREN OF GOD AND THE CHILDREN 
OF MAN. 

(JEHOVIST SOURCE.) 

CHAP. VI. l. It happened, as men began to mul- 
tiply on the face of the ground and 
daughters were born to them, 

2 the children of God (benS haelohim) saw the 

daughters of man (benoth hd'dddm), that 
they were beautiful ; then they took for 
wives among them all those who pleased 
them. 

3 And Yahveh said : " My spirit will not pre- 

vail always in man, because he is flesh ; 
and his days shall be 120 years." 

4 The Giants (nepkilim) were on the earth in 

these days, and also after that the children 
of God had come to the daughters of man, 
and these had given them children : they 
are the heroes (gibbdrim) who belong to 
antiquity, men of renown. 



\J 



VII. 

THE DELUGE. 
(combination of the two versions, elohist and JEH0VIST.)(1) 

5 And Yahveh saw that the wickedness of man 

was great upon the earth, and that the 
direction of the thoughts of his heart tended 
constantly toward evil; 

6 and Yahveh repented him of having made 

man on the earth, and he ivas grieved in 
his heart. 
1 And Yahveh said: u I will exterminate man 
whom I have created from the surface of 
the ground, beginning at man, even to the 
cattle, to the reptiles and to the foivls of the 
air, for I repent me of having made them!' 

8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of Yahveh. 

9 This is "The genealogies of Noah." Noah 

was a just man and upright among his 
contemporaries ; Noah walked with God, 

( x ) We put in italics all that is referred to the Jehovist docu- 
ment, thus separating the two accounts, combined by the last 
editor, the one from the other, and at the same time preserving 
each in its integrity. 

24 



The Biblical Account. 25 

10 and Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham 

and Yapheth. 

11 And the earth was corrupt before God, and 

the earth was full of violence. 

12 And Elohim looked upon the earth, and be- 

hold, it was corrupt ; for all flesh had cor- 
rupted its way upon the earth. 

13 And Elohim said to Noah : " The end of all 

flesh is come before me, for the earth is 
filled with violence through them ; and 
behold, I will bring them to perdition 
with the earth. 

14 Make for thyself a chest of cypress wood ; 

divide this chest in cells, and overspread 
it with bitumen within and without. 

15 And thus shalt thou make it : 300 cubits the 

length of the chest, 50 cubits its breadth, 
and 30 cubits its height. 

16 Thou shalt make a window to the ark, and 

thou shalt limit it to a cubit on the top ; 
and thou shalt place the door of the ark 
on the side ; and thou shalt make a lower 
story to it, a second and a third. 

17 And behold, I will make to come the deluge 

of the waters upon the earth to destroy all 
flesh which has in it the breath of life 
under the heavens ; all that is upon the 
earth shall die ; 



VJ 



26 The Beginnings of History. 

is but I will establish my compact with, thee, 
and thou shalt enter the ark, thou and 
thy sons, and thy wife and thy sons' wives 
with thee. 

19 And of all that which lives, of all flesh, thou 

shalt make to enter within the ark two of 
each (species) to preserve them in life with 
thee ; let them be male and female. 

20 Of fowls after their kind, of cattle after its 

kind, of every reptile of the ground after 
its kind, two of each shall come to thee 
that thou mayst preserve them in life. 

21 And thou, take for thyself all food which is 

eaten ; gather it near thee, and it shall be 
for nourishment for thee and for them." 

22 And Noah did it ; all that Elohim had com- 

manded him, he did it. 

CHAP. VII. l. And Yahveh said to Noah: " En- 
ter into the ark^ 1 ) thou and all thy house, 
for I have seen thee just before me in this age. 
2 Of all clean cattle thou shalt take with thee 
seven pairs, the male and his female, and 
of cattle which is not clean one pair, the 
male and his female. 

(*) The Jehovist document evidently placed the instructions 
given by Yahveh to Noah for the building of the ark prior to 
this ; the final editor omitted them, doubtless because they were 
an exact repetition of those in the Elohist document. 



The Biblical Account 27 

3 Also of the fowls of the air [which are clean] 

seven pairs, the male and his female [and 
of fowls ivhich are not clean one pair, the 
male and his female], (*) in order to preserve 
their living seed upon the face of all the 
earth. 

4 For after yet seven days, I will make it to 

rain on the earth forty days and forty 
nights, and I will destroy every being 
which I have made from off the face of the 
ground." 

5 And Noah did all as Yahveh had com- 

manded him. 

6 And Noah was 600 years old when the 

deluge of waters was upon the earth. 

7 And Noah came, and his sons and his wife, 

and his sons wives with him, into the ark 
before the waters of the deluge. 

8 Of clean cattle and of cattle which is not clean 

and of fowls [clean and of fowls that are 
not clean], and of all that which moves 
upon the ground,^) 

9 two by two came to Noah in the ark, the male 

( 1 ) We complete, according to the version of the Septuagint, 
this verse, mutilated in the Hebrew text. (See A. Kayser, Das 
vorexilische Buch der Urgeschichte Israels, p. 8.) 

( 2 ) Again an incomplete verse in the Hebrew, which we 
restore according to the Septuagint. 



VJ 



28 The Beginnings of History. 

and the female, as Elohimi^) had com- 
manded JVdah.f?) 

10 And it happened after seven days the waters 

of the deluge were upon the earth. 

11 In the six hundredth year of the life of Noah, 

in the second month, the seventeenth day 
of the month, on that day all the springs 
of the great abyss gushed forth, and the 
flood-gates of heaven were opened 

12 and the rain was upon the earth forty days 

and forty nights. 

13 In this same day Noah entered into the ark, 

and Shem and Ham and Yapheth, the 
sons of Noah, and the wife of Noah, and 
the three wives of his sons with him, 

14 they and every living being after its kind — 

all cattle after its kind, all that is feathered, 
all that is winged ; 

15 and they came to Noah into the ark, two by 

two of all flesh in which is the breath of 
life ; 

16 and they that came, male and female of all 

( 1 ) The employment of this divine Name here, instead of 
that of Yahveh, is exceptional and singular, for this verse evi- 
dently belongs to the Jehovist redaction. (See Schrader, Shi- 
dien zur Kritlk und Erklcerung der Biblischen Urgeschichte, 
p. 138.) 

( 2 ) It seems at least very probable that the sentence, which 
the text as it stands transfers to the end of verse 16 — and Yah- 
veh shut him up — occurred originally at this point. 



The Biblical Account. 29 

flesh, came in obedience to what Elohim 
had commanded Noah [and Yahveh shut 
him up].( l ) 

17 And the deluge was forty days on the earth ; 

and the waters increased and lifted up the 
ark, and it was raised above the earth. 

18 And the waters strengthened and grew upon 

the earth, and the ark began to move on 
the surface of the waters. 

19 And the waters strengthened more and more 

upon the earth, and all the high mountains 
that are under all the heavens were 
covered ; 

20 fifteen cubits upwards the waters rose, and 

the mountains were covered. 

21 And all flesh that moved upon the earth 

died, of cattle, of wild animals, and of 
every reptile which creeps upon the earth, 
and also every man ; 

22 everything that breathed the breath of life 

in its nostrils, everything that was upon 
the dry land died. 

23 And every living being which was upon the 

face of the ground was destroyed, from man 
even to the cattle, the reptiles and the fowls 
of the air, and they were exterminated from 
off the earth; and there remained only 

(*) See the preceding note. 



30 The Beginnings of History. 

Noah and those who were with him in the 
ark. 
24 And the waters grew upon the earth during 
one hundred and fifty days. 

chap. viii. l. And Elohim remembered Noah, 
and all the animals and all the cattle which 
were with him in the ark ; and Elohim 
made a wind to pass over the earth, and 
the waters were abated. 

2 And the sources of the abyss and the flood- 

gates of heaven were closed, and the rain 
from heaven ceased. 

3 and the waters retreated from off the earthy 

departing and withdrawing themselves, and 
the waters diminished after one hundred 
and fifty days. 

4 And the ark stood still on the mountains of 

Ararat, in the seventh month, the seven- 
teenth day of the month. 

5 The waters went on decreasing until the tenth 

month ; in the tenth month, on the first 
day of the month, the tops of the moun- 
tains appeared. 

6 And it came to pass, at the end of the forty 

days, Noah opened the window of the ark 
that he had made, 

7 and he sent out the raven ; and it went out, 



The Biblical Account 31 

going forth and returning, until the waters 
were dried up on the earth. 

8 ,(*) and he sent out after it the 

dove, to see if the waters had diminished on 
the face of the ground, 

9 and the clove found no place where to rest 
the sole of its feet, and it returned to him 
into the ark, because the waters were upon 
the face of all the earth ; and he stretched 
out his hand, and took it and brought it 
back to him into the ark. 

10 And Noah waited yet seven more days, and 

again he sent the dove out of the ark; 

11 and the dove returned to him in the evening, 

and behold, a fresh olive leaf was in its 
beak. And Noah knew that the waters 
had diminished off the earth. 

12 And Noah waited yet seven more days, and 

he sent out the dove ; but this time it re- 
turned to him no more. 

13 And it came to pass, in the six hundredth 

and first year, in the first month, the first 
of the month, the waters had dried off 
the earth ; and Noah raised the lid of the 

( l ) There is an undoubted gap here, but it is possible to fill 
it with an almost entire certainty with the help of the opening 
words of verses 10 and 12: 

[And Noah waited seven days.] 



\J 



32 The Beginnings of History. 

chest, and behold, the surface of the ground 
was dried. 

14 And in the second month, the twenty-seventh 

day of the month, the earth was dry. 

15 And Elohim spake to Noah, saying : 

16 "Go out of the ark, thou, and thy wife and 

thy sons, and thy sons' wives with thee. 

17 Every living animal which is with thee of all 

flesh, of fowls, of cattle, and of every being 
endowed with motion, which moves upon 
the earth, make them to go out with thee ; 
let them spread themselves over the earth, 
let them be fruitful, and let them multiply 
upon the earth ! ' ' 

18 And Noah went out, and his sons and his 

wife, and his sons' wives with him. 

19 Every living animal and every being en- 

dowed with motion, and every bird, and 
everything that moves upon the earth ac- 
cording to their kinds, came out of the ark. 

20 And Noah built an altar to Yahveh, and he 

took of all clean cattle, and of all clean fowl, 
and he offered a holocaust upon the altar; 

21 and Yahveh smelled the pleasant odor, and 

Yahveh said in his heart: "I will no longer 
curse the ground because of man, for the 
thought of the heart of man is evil from his 
youth ; and I will not smite everything that 
lives, as I have done before. 



The Biblical Account. 33 

22 So long as the days of the earth shall be, the 
seed-time and the harvest, the cold and the 
heat, the summer and the winter, the day 
and the night shall not cease" 

chap. IX. l. And Elohim blessed Noah and his 
sons, and said to them: " Be fruitful, mul- 
tiply and replenish the earth. 

2 And you shall be an object of fear and terror 

to all the animals of the earth, and to all 
the fowls of the air, to all that move upon 
the earth and to all the fishes of the sea ; 
they are delivered into your hands. 

3 All things that move and all living things 

shall be to you for food ; like as the green 
of the herb, I give you all. 

4 But you shall not eat the flesh with its soul,» 

with its blood. 

5 But likewise I will demand back your blood, 

that of your souls ; I will demand it back 
at the hand of every animal, and at the 
hand of the man who is his brother, will I 
demand back the life of man. 

6 Whoso spills the blood of man, by man shall 

his blood be spilled, because it is in the 
image of Elohim that he has made man. 

7 And you, be fruitful and multiply, spread 

yourselves over the earth, and multiply 

upon it." 
3 



34 The Beginnings of History. 



\j 



8 And Eloliim spoke to Noah, and to his sons 

with him, saying: 

9 " Behold, I will establish my compact with 

you and with your race after you, 

10 and with every living being that is with you, 

of fowl, of cattle, and of every animal of 
the earth with you, be it with all those 
who came out of the ark, be it with every 
animal of the earth. 

11 And I will establish my compact with you : 

all flesh shall never again be exterminated 
by the waters of the deluge, and there shall 
never again be a deluge to destroy the 
earth." 

12 And Eloliim said: "This is a sign of the 

compact which I grant between me and 
you and every living creature, which is 
with you, to endure forever ; 

13 I have placed my bow in the clouds, and it 

shall be for a sign of the compact between 
me and the earth. 

14 And it shall come to pass when I shall have 

gathered together the cloud above the 
earth, the bow will appear in the cloud. 

15 And I will call to mind the compact which is 

between me and you, and every living being 
of all flesh, and there . shall be no more 
waters of a deluge to destroy all flesh. 



The Biblical Account 35 

16 And the bow shall be in the cloud, and I will 

look upon it to remind me of the perpetual 
compact between Elohim and every living 
being of all flesh, which is upon the earth." 

17 And Elohim said to Noah: "This is the 

sign of the compact which I have estab- 
lished between me and all flesh, which is 
upon the earth." 



VIII. 

THE CUESE OF KENA'AN. 

(JEHOVIST SOURCE.) 

CHAP. IX. 18. And the sons of Noah, who came 
out of the ark, were Shem, Ham and 
Yapheth, and Ham is the father of Ke- 
na'an. 

19 These three are the sons of Noah, and from 

them all the earth was peopled. 

20 And Noah began to be a cultivator of the 

ground, and he planted the vine ; 

21 And he drank wine, and became drunken, 

and uncovered himself in the midst of his 
v tent. 

22 And Ham, the father of Kena'an, saw the 

nakedness of his father, and he told of it 
without to his two brothers. 

23 Then Shem and Yapheth took the cloak and 

laid it upon their two shoulders ; and they 
walked backward and covered the naked- 
ness of their father ; and their face was 
36 



The Biblical Account. 37 

turned to the other side, and they saw not 
the nakedness of their father. 

24 And Noah awoke from his drunkenness, and 

knew that which his youngest son had 
done to him ; 

25 and he said: "Cursed be Kena'an! Let him 

be the slave of the slaves of his brothers ! ' ' 

26 And he said: "Blessed be Yahveh, the god 

of Shem ! and may Kena'an be their 
slave ! 

27 May Elohim^) enlarge Yapheth, and may he 

dwell in glorious tents, ( 2 ) and may Kena'an 
be their slave ! ' ' 

(*) Eloliim is used here in the verse relating to Yapheth, 
because that is the universal name of God in connection with 
the Gentiles, whereas that of Yahveh is peculiar to the chosen 
people, who ascribe their origin to Shem. 

( 2 ) Literally "tents of glory;" this is the most simple and 
natural interpretation, and much more probable than that cur- 
rent in the majority of versions, " that he may dwell in the 
tents of Shem." 



IX. 

THE PEOPLES DESCENDED FEOM NOAH. 
(elohjst source.) 

chap. x. l. This is "The genealogy of the sons 
of Noah, Shem, Ham and Yapheth." 
And sons were born to them after the 
deluge. 

2 The sons of Yapheth : Gomer and Magog and 

Madai and Yavan and Tubal and Meshek 
and Tiras. 

3 The sons of Gomer: Ashkenaz and Eiphath 

and Togarmah. 

4 And the sons of Yavan : Elishah and Tar- 

shish, the Kittim and the Dodanim. 

5 By these were peopled the islands of the 

nations by countries, according to the 
language of each, according to their fami- 
lies, by nations. 

6 The sons of Ham : Kush and Micraim and 

Put and Kena'an. 

7 And the sons of Kush: Seba and Havilah 

and Sabtah and Ra'emah, and Sabteka ;— 
38 



The Biblical Account. 39 

and the sons of Ra'emah : Sheba and 
Dedan. 

8 [(*) And Kusli begat Nimrod, and be be- 

gan to be a hero (gibbor) on the earth ; 

9 he was a hero-huntsman before Yahveh ; 

therefore it is said "like Nimrod, hero- 
huntsman before Yahveh." 

10 And the beginning of his royalty was Babel 

and Erek, and Akkad, and Kalneh, in the 
land of Shin'ar. 

11 From this land came out Asshur, and he 

built Mneveh and Rehoboth-'Ir and Ka- 

12 lah and Resen between Mneveh and Ka- 

lah : that is the great city.] 

13 And Micraim begat the Liidim and the 

'Anamim and the Lehabim and the 
Naphtuhim 

14 and the Pathrusim and the Kasluhim ; 

from whom came forth the Pelishtim, and 
the Kaphtorim. 

15 And Kena'an begat (JM<5 n > his first born, 

and Heth 

16 and the Yebusi and the Emori and the 

Girgashi 

17 and the Hivvi and the 'Arqi and the Sini 

18 and the Arvadi and the Qemari and the 

( x ) These five verses manifestly constitute an intercalation, 
originally foreign to the genealogy of the sons of Noa'h, and 
drawn from the Jehovist document. 



\J 



40 The Beginnings of History. 

Hamathi, and afterwards the families of 
the Kena'ani were scattered, 

19 and the borders of the Kena'ani reached from 

Qidon unto 'Azzah, going towards Grerar, 
and as far as Lesha', going toward Sedom 
and 'Amorah and Admah and Qeboim. 

20 These are the children of Ham according- to 

their families, according to their languages, 
in their countries, in their nations ; 

21 [and there were some born also of Shem, 

the father of all the sons of 'Eber, and the 
elder brother of Yapheth.]^) 

22 The sons of Shem : 'Elam and Asshur and 

Arphakshad and Lud and Aram. 
2:s And the sons of Aram : 'Uc, Hul, Gether 
and Mash. 

24 And Arphakshad begat Shelah, and Shelah 

begat 'Eber ; 

25 and of 'Eber were born two sons : the name 

of the one Peleg, because that in these 
days the earth was divided and the name 
of his brother Yaqtan.( 2 ) 



C 1 ) This verse deviates from the usual system of the gene- 
alogy, and manifestly constitutes an addition to the primitive 
document. 

( 2 ) The form of this verse, more complex than the genea- 
logical statements in general, gives rise to strong suspicions 
that the primitive text has been developed by later additions. 



The Biblical Account. 41 

26 And Yaqtan begat Almodad and Shaleph 

and Hacarmaveth and Yerah 

27 and Hadoram and Uzal and Diqlah 

28 and 'Obal and Abimael and Sheba 

29 and Ophir and Havilab and Yobab ; all 

these are the sons of Yaqtan, 

30 and their dwelling was from Mesha, going 

toward Sephar, as far as the mountain of 
the East. 

31 These are the children of Shem, according 

to their families, according to their lan- 
guages, by countries, by nations. 

32 Such are the families of the sons of Noah, 

according to their genealogies, by their 
nations, and from them the nations were 
spread over the earth after the deluge. 



\J 



X. 

THE TOWER OF BABEL. 

(JEHOVIST VERSION.) 

CHAP. XI. 1. And all the earth had only one lan- 
guage and the same words. 

2 And it came to pass, in their migration 

from the East, they found a great valley 
in the land of Shin'ar, and they abode 
there. 

3 And they said one to the other: "Come! let 

us mould some bricks and bake them in 
the fire ! ' ' And brick served them for 
stone and asphaltum for mortar. 

4 And they said : "Come ! let us build a city 

and a tower, and let its top reach to 
heaven ; and let us make us a name, that 
we may not be dispersed over the surface 
of all the earth." 

5 And Yahveh came down to see the city and 

the tower, which the sons of men builded. 

6 And Yahveh said: "Behold, they are a 

single people, and a single language is for 
42 



The Biblical Account 43 

all, and this is the beginning of their 
work, and now nothing more will hinder 
them from accomplishing all that they 
shall project. 

7 Gome ! let us go down and confound their 

language, that the one may no longer 
understand the language of the other!" 

8 And Yahveh scattered them from thence 

over the surface of all the earth, and they 
stopped building the city. 

9 Therefore did they call it by the name of 

Babel, because Yahveh there confounded 
the language of all the earth, and from 
thence Yahveh scattered them over all the 
surface of the earth. 



\J 



XI 

THE ORIGIN OF THE TERAHITES. 
(elohist veesion.) 

CHAP. XI. 10. This is " The genealogies of Shem : " 
Shem was [aged] 100 years, and he begat 
Arphakshad, two years after the deluge : 

11 Shem lived 500 years after having begotten 

Arphakshad, and he begat sons and 
daughters. 

12 And Arphakshad lived 35 years, and he 

begat Shelah ; 

13 and Arphakshad lived 403 years after hav- 

ing begotten Shelah ; and he begat sons 
and daughters. 

14 And Shelah lived 30 years, and he begat 

'Eber ; 

15 and Shelah lived 403 years after he had 

begotten 'Eber, and he beg;at sons and 
daughters. 

16 And 'Eber lived 34 years, and he begat 

Peleg ; 
44 



The Biblical Account 45 

17 and 'Eber lived 430 years after he had 
begotten Peleg, and he begat sons and 
daughters. 

is And Peleg lived 30 years, and he begat 
Re'ft ; 

19 and Peleg lived 209 years after having 

begotten Re* ft, and he begat sons and 
daughters. 

20 And Re'ft lived 32 years, and he begat 

Serftg ; 

21 and Re'ft lived 207 years after having 

begotten Serftg, and he begat sons and 
daughters. 

22 And Serftg lived 30 years, and he begat 

Na^or ; 

23 and Serftg lived 200 years after having 

begotten Nahor, and he begat sons and 
daughters. 

24 And Nahor lived 29 years, and he begat 

Terah ; 

25 and Nahor lived 119 years after having 

begotten Terah, and he begat sons and 
daughters. • 

26 And Terah lived 70 years, and he begat 

Abram and Nahor and Haran. 



\J 



XII. 

THE MIGRATION OF THE TERAHITES. 
(elohist veksion.) 

CHAP. XII. 27. This is " The genealogies of Terah." 
Terah begat Abram and Naljor and Ha- 
ran, and Haran begat Lot. 

28 And Haran died in the presence of Terah, 

his father, in the country of his birth, in 
Ur of the Kasdim. 

29 And Abram and Nahor took wives : the 

name of Abram' s wife, Sarai, and the 
name of Nahor's wife, Milkah, daughter 
of Haran, father of Milkah and father of 
Yiskah. 

30 And Sarai was sterile ; she had no child. 

31 And Terah took Abram, his son, and Lot, 

the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai, 
his daughter-in-law, the wife of Abram, his 
son ; and they departed together from ur 
of the Kasdim to go towards the land of 
Kena'an, and they went as far as Haran 
and settled themselves there. 

32 And the days of Terah were 205 years, 

and Terah died at Haran. 
46 



COMPARATIVE STUDY 

OP 

THE BIBLICAL ACCOUNT 

AND OF 

PARALLEL TRADITIONS. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE CREATION OF MAN. 

According to the ideas commonly prevailing 
among the peoples of antiquity, man is regarded as 
autochthonous, or issued from the earth which bears 
him. Rarely, in the accounts which treat of his first 
appearance, do we discover a trace of the notion which 
supposes him to be created by the omnipotent opera- 
tion of a deity, who is personal and distinct from 
primordial matter. The fundamental concepts of 
pantheism and emanatism, upon which were based 
the learned and proud religions of the ancient world, 
made it possible to leave in a state of vague uncer- 
tainty the origin and production of men. They were 
looked upon, in common with all things, as having 
sprung from the very substance of the divinity, which 
was confounded with the world ; this coming forth 
had been a spontaneous action, through the develop- 
ment of the chain of emanations, and not the result 
of a free and determinate act of creative will, and 
there was very little anxiety shown to define, other- 
wise than under a symbolical and mythological form, 
47 



VJ 



48 The Beginnings of History. 

the manner of that emanation which took place by a 
veritable act of spontaneous generation. 

" Of the wind Colpias (the voice of the breath, 
Qol-plah) and his spouse Baau (chaos, Baku)," says 
one of the fragments of Phoenician cosmogony, trans- 
lated into Greek, which have come down to us under 
the name of Sanchoniathon^ 1 ) "was born the human 
and mortal pair of Protogonos (the first-born, Adam- 
Qadmun) and iEon (Havath), and iEon found out 
how to eat the fruit of the tree. Their children 
were Genos and Genea (Q3n and Qendth), who dwelt 
in Phoenicia, and, overcome by the heat of summer, 
began to lift their hands toward the sun, regarding 
it as the only god, lord of heaven, a belief which is 
expressed in the name Beelsamen (JBa'al-SJiamem)."^) 
In another fragment of the same cosmogonies( 3 ) the 
birth of "the autochthonous issue of the earth' 7 
(Trjivoz AvTOzdatP, hd'ddam min-hd'addmdth) y from 
whom springs the race of men, is touched upon. 
The traditions of Libya made the first human being, 
Iarbas, spring from the plains heated by the sun, and 
gave him for food the sweet acorns of the oak 
tree.( 4 ) According to the ideas of the Egyptians, we 
are told ( 5 ) that " the fertilizing mud left by the Nile, 
and exposed to the vivifying action of heat induced 

( J ) P. 14, Ed. Orelli : see the first appendix at the end of the 
volume, II. E. 

( 2 ) Cf. Genesis iv. 26 : " Then (in the days of Sheth, after the 
birth of Enosh) men began to invoke by the name of Yahveh." 

( 3 ) P. 18, Ed. Orelli ; in the first appendix, II. F. 

( 4 ) Fragment of Pindar cited by the author of Philosophumena, 
v., 7, p. 97, ed.«Miller. 

( 5 ) Same fragment; Censorin., De die natal., 4; Cf. Justin., 
II. 1. 



The Creation of Man. 49 

by the sun's rays, brought forth germs which spring 
up as the bodies of men." This belief, translated 
into a mythological form, made human beings ema- 
nate from the eye of the god Ra-'Har-em-akhuti ; ( x ) 
in other words, the sun. The emanation which 
brings forth in such wise the material part of men, 
does not, however, prevent a later demiurgic opera- 
tion, which gives them the finishing touches, and 
endows them with a soul and intellect. Among the 
Asiatic and Northern races of the 'Amu and the 
Tama'hu (corresponding to the races of Shem and 
Yapheth in the Biblical account), this operation is 
attributed to the goddess Sekhet, while 'Har per- 
forms the same office for the negroes. As to the 
Egyptians, who regarded themselves as superior to 
all other races, their fashioner was the supreme demi- 
urge Khniim, and it is in this connection that he 
appears upon some monuments moulding clay, where- 
with to form man, upon the same potter's wheel on 
which he has already shaped the primordial egg of 
the universe. ( 2 ) 

Presented in this wise, the Egyptian account bears 
a striking resemblance to that of the Jehovist docu- 
ment of Genesis,( 3 ) wherein God " forms man out of 
the dust of the ground." Furthermore, the action 
of the modeler furnished the most natural means of 
representing to primitive imaginations the action of 
the creator or demiurge under an intelligible form. 

(!) Papyrus of Boulaq, vol. II., pi. xi., p. 6, 1, 3. — See also E. 
Lefebure, Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archseology, vol. 
IV., pp. 45 and 47. 

( 2 ) See Chabas, Etudes sur V antiquite historique, p. 81. 

( 3 ) II. 4. 

4 



50 The Begirmmgi of History. 

- we still find among peoples who have not T -;: 
emerged from the savage state, the same notion pre- 
vailing of man fashioned ont of earth by the hand of 
the creator. In the an gony of Peru, the first 
man, created by the divine Omnipotence, is called 
Aljpa camasca, u Animated earth. "( x ) Among the 
tribes of North America, the Mandans related that 
the Gr \ it Spirit moulded two figures of clay, which 
he dried and animated with the breath of his mouth, 
one receiving the name of First Man. the other that 
of Companion. The great god of Tahiti, Taeroa, 

ed man out of red earth, and the Dayaks of 
Borneo, proof against all Mussulman influences, go 
on telling from generation to generation how man 
was formed from earth. 

; will not, however, insist too strenuously upon 
admitting this last category of affinities, where one 
might easily go astray, but confine ourselves to such 
as are offered by the sacred traditions of the great 
civilized nations of antiquity. " The Chaldeans/' 
says an ecclesiastical writer of the first Christian 

ri - . - • • call Adam the man whom the earth 
produced. And he lay without movement, without 

and without breath, just like an image of the 
heavenly Adam, until his - a! had been given him 
by the latf :." Ought this to be accepted as 

1 On the -her hand, a second tra li itioned by Aven- 

d : '.-'- ; 1 sdi! ■.:' '. >49 ': - fl . ; •-. : jgga fallen 

:'. heaven, one of gold, from whence came out the Caracas or 
princes, the next of silver, from which the nobles originated, and 
the third of c< per, c - :' i ; med. 

(2) Philoaophumena, --.."/ " M Qer. 

B re f - )te the intervention .: -- ilea, which plays an 



The Creation of Man. 51 

indeed a legacy from antiquity taught in some one of 
the sacerdotal schools of Chaldea, or rather as a con- 
ception of the sects of Kabbalists, a later development 
of the same soil, who exercised a profound influence 
upon the Jewish philosophy of the Middle Ages? 
The question is still very doubtful. In any case, the 
cosmogonic account peculiar to Babylon, put into 
Greek by Berossus, bears a much closer resemblance 

important part in the Jewish Kabbala, that of Adam Qadmon 
(Knorr de Rosenroth, Kabbala denudata, vol. L, p. 28), prototype 
of humanity, and at the same time primeval emanation of the 
Divinity, having the character of a true Logos (P. Beer, Geschichte, 
Lehren und Meinungen oiler religicesen Sekten der Juden, vol. II., p. 
61 ; Maury, Revue Archeologique, 1st Series, vol. VIII., p. 239). 
The Ophites or Nahassenians, in the first centuries of Christianity, 
adopted this idea of Adam Qadmon in their Adamas, in regard 
to whom the author of the Pbilosophumena furnishes us with 
some curious information (v., 6-9, pp. 94-119, ed. Miller), and 
whom they called "the man from on high," an exact translation 
of the Kabbala title, "the superior Adam." The Barbelonites, a 
branch of the Ophites, said furthermore, that Logos and Ennoia, 
coming together, had begotten Autogenes (Qadmon), type of the 
great light, and surrounded by four cosmic luminaries, with Ale- 
theia his spouse, of whom was born Adamas, the typical and per- 
fect man (St. Iren., Adv. hseres., 1, 29). 

To what extent all this may have been borrowed from the phi- 
losophico-religious conceptions of the sanctuaries of ancient Asia 
it is difficult to tell. We may notice, however, that in one of the 
cosmogonic fragments, awkwardly pieced together, and preserved 
to us in the extracts from the Sanchoniathon of Philo of Byblos, 
as they have come down to us, Epigeios or Autochthon, that is to 
say, Adam (with the same allusion to addmath as in the text of 
Genesis), is born at the beginning of all things of the supreme 
God 'Elioun, and is identical with Ouranos, brother and spouse of 
Ge (Sanchoniat., p. 24, ed. Orelli). See our first appendix, II. G. 
Now, according to the Kabbala, Adam Qadmon is a macrocosm, 
whence emanate the four successive degrees of the creation. (See 
Maury, Revue Archeologique, vol. VIII., pp. 238-243.) 



52 The Beginnings of History. 

to that which we read in the second chapter of Genesis ; 
here again man is made of clay after the manner of a 
statue. " Belos (the demiurge Bel-Marduk) seeing 
that the earth was uninhabited, though fertile, cut off 
his own head, and the other gods, after kneading with 
earth the blood that flowed from it, formed men, who 
therefore are endowed with intelligence, and share in 
the divine thought,^) and also the animals, who are 
able to live in contact with the air.( 2 ) With the differ- 
ence that the setting is polytheistic in the one case, 
and strictly monotheistic in the other, the facts here 
follow exactly the same order as in the narration of 
the Jehovist document of the Pentateuch. The 
barren earth ( 3 ) becomes fertile ; ( 4 ) then man is 
moulded out of clay, to which are communicated 
the intelligent soul, and the vital breath, ( 5 ) and 
after him animals are formed of earth as he was,( 6 ) 



(!) The Orphics, which have borrowed so largely from the East, 
accepted, as regards the origin of men, the idea to which we 
shall recur in chapters VII. and X., that they were descended 
from the Titans. They said that the immaterial part of man, his 
soul, sprang from the blood of Dionysos Zagreus, whom these 
Titans had torn to pieces, partly devouring his members. (Procl., 
\j In Cratyl., p. 82, cf. pp. 59 and 114; Dio Chrysost., OraL, 30, p. 

550; Olympiador., In Phaedon, ap. Mustoxyd. et Schin., Anecdot., 
part IV., p. 4; cf. Marsil. Ficin., IX., Ennead. I., p. 83, sq. ; 
Maury, Histoire des Religions de la Grece, vol. III., p. 329.) This 
is the same idea that we find in Berossus, of the blood of a god 
mingling with the matter out of which men are formed, and also 
the physiological theory that the soul is in the blood, a theory 
that we find reproduced in Genesis ix. 4 and 5. 

( 2 ) Berossus, frag. 1 ; see our first appendix, I. E. 

( 3 ) Genesis ii. 5. ( 4 ) Genesis ii. 6. 
( 5 ) Genesis ii. 7. ( 6 ) Genesis ii. 19. 



The Creation of Man. 53 

and actually modeled^ 1 ) In the Elohist version of 
the first chapter, man is created after the animals, 
as being the most perfect creature issued from the 
hands of God, and the crown of his work. More- 
over, the divine work is described in a far more 
spiritual manner; all the creatures, whatever they 
may be, spring into being at the sole word of the 
Eternal. In the second chapter Yahveh descends 
almost to the proportions of a demiurge; in the first 
chapter Elohim is the creator, in the full force of the 
term. 

A young English scholar, George Smith, gifted 
with the most penetrative genius, who, during a 
very brief career, terminated suddenly by death, 
made his undying mark among Assyriologists, recog- 
nized the remains of a kind of cosmogonic epic of an 
Assyro-Babylonian Genesis, recounting the work of 
the seven days,( 2 ) among the clay tablets covered with 
cuneiform writing, belonging to the Palace Library 
of Nineveh, and now in the possession of the 
British Museum. Each of the tablets, of which 
the series contained this history, bore one of the songs 
of the poem, one of the chapters of the narrative, 
giving first the generation of the gods, sprung from 
primordial chaos, then the successive acts of Creation, 
following the same order as that used in the Elohist 



(*) The verb yaqar, used in the Biblical text to designate this 
formation of man and beasts, is properly that which describes the 
operation of the potter in modeling the clay, by pressing it be- 
tween his lingers. 

( 2 ) See the first appendix at the end of this volume, I. 0. 



\J 



54 The Beginnings of History. 

document of the first chapter of Genesis^ 1 ) each act, 
however, being attributed to a different god. This 
narration appears, from marked indications, ( 2 ) to be 
properly an Assyrian version, for each one of the 
great sacerdotal schools, whose existence has become 
known to us in the territory of the Chaldeo-Assyrian 
religion, appears to have had its own particular 
form of cosmogonic tradition ; the fundamental idea 
was everywhere the same, but the mythologic 
expression sensibly varied. The Babylonian story, 
made known to us by Berossus, presents some notable 
variations from that which we read in the documents 
so fortunately discovered by George Smith ; and 

(*) We have the fragments of two tablets which still bear their 
numbers in order. That of the first (1 in our appendix) is more 
theogonic than cosmogonic ; it contains the succession of the gen- 
erations of the gods, emanating from primordial chaos. This is 
an order of conceptions antagonistic to the monotheism of Genesis, 
wherein for all this exposition are substituted the two verses, i. 1 
and 2. The fragment of the fifth tablet (4) belongs to the story 
of the placing of the celestial bodies, attributed to the god Anu ; 
this is the work of the fourth day in Genesis (i. 14-19), and we see 
that in the Assyrian poem it finds its place likewise in the fourth 
song following that concerning Chaos. In the interval belong 
the fragments of two more tablets, one relating to the establishment 
of the foundations of the earth and of the vault of heaven by 
the god Asshur (2), work of the second day (Genesis i. 6-8) ; the 
other telling of the dividing of the continent from the seas, 
effected by the goddess Kishar or Sheruya (3), work of the third 
day (Genesis i. 9-10). In conclusion, a last fragment (5) belongs 
to a later tablet than the fifth, and begins with the creation of 
terrestrial animals, attributed to the combined deities, work of 
the sixth day (Genesis i. 24, 25). 

( 2 ) These indications are on the fragment which we have desig- 
nated by the figure 3, and they result from the importance therein 
attributed to the country of Assyria. 



The Creation of Man. 55 

another tablet in the British Museum yields us a 
shred of the tradition of the sanctuary of Ktiti, the 
Cutha of classic geography, whose peculiar indivi- 
duality is not less strongly characterised^ 1 ) The 
story of the formation of man is unfortunately not 
included in the fragments of the Assyrian Genesis, 
which have so far been recognized. ( 2 ) But at least 
we know positively that one of the immortals who 
was represented therein as " having formed with 
his hands the race of maa/'f) as " having formed 
humanity to be subject to the gods/\ 4 ) was Ea ; the 

( x ) Gr. Smith, Chaldean Account of Genesis, pp. 102-106. [Rev. 
Ed., pp. 92-96. Tr.] This account treats of the generations of 
monstrous beings who were reputed to have sprung from the 
darkness of chaos, before the production of the perfect crea- 
tions of the world, come at last to a regular order, beings 
of whom it was said that they could not endure the first 
manifestation of light. We read the same rendering of the 
story, according to the Babylonian tradition, in the first frag- 
ment of Berossus, and it appears likewise in the first Phoe- 
nician cosmogony of the extracts of Sanchoniathon (p. 10, sq., ed. 
Orelli). On this subject see C. W. Mansell, Gazette Archeolo- 
gique, 1878, pp. 131-140. There again is a version which Genesis 
does not admit. 

( 2 ) Notwithstanding, in fragment 5 the creation of man is per- 
haps referred to in these words, which occur after the indication 
of the creation of terrestrial animals by the united efforts of the 
gods : 

. . . . and the God with the piercing eye (Ea) associated 
them in a pair. 

. . . . the collection of creeping beasts began to move. . . 

( 3 ) hikuna va at imrnasd amatusu ina pi calmat qaqqadu ia 
Una qatdsu, "that his commandment be firm and never be for- 
gotten in the mouth of the race of men, that his two hands have 
formed ! " 

( 4 ) Ana padisunu ibnu amelutu, "to be subject to them (the 
gods) he has formed humanity." 



56 The Beginnings of History. 

god of the supreme intelligence, the master of all 
wisdom, the "god of the pure life, director of pu- 
rity ,"0 "he who raises the dead to life,"( 2 ) "the 
merciful one with whom life exists."( 3 ) Here we are 
given a kind of litany of gratitude, which has been 
preserved to us on a bit of clay tablet, that perhaps 
made part of a collection of cosmogonic poems. ( 4 ) One 
of the most usual titles of Ea is that of " Lord of the 
human species " (bel teniketi) ; and more than once in 
the religious and cosmogonic documents there is 
reference to the connection between this god and 
" man who is his own." And in a parallel case 
the term employed to designate " man " in his con- 
nection with his creator, is admu, the Assyrian 
counterpart of the Hebrew dddm, but at the same 
time a word which almost never appears elsewhere 
in the texts so far known. It seems, however, 
that this word was not the one which had been taken 
to form the name of the first man in the Chaldeo- 
Baby Ionian tradition. ( 5 ) The fragments of Be- 

( 1 ) II napiHi elliti salsis imbu mukil telilti, "god of the pure 
life, in the third place he has been named, director of purity." 

( 2 ) Bel sipti ellitiv muballit ?niti, "god of the pure charm, reviver 
\J of the dead." 

( 3 ) Rimenu sa bullutu basil ittisu. 

( 4 ) The text in Friedrich Delitzsch, Assyrische Lesestikke, 2d 
edition, p. 80, sq. The translation given in G. Smith, Chaldean 
Account of Genesis, p. 82, sq., is very inexact. [Improved in the 
Rev. Ed., pp. 76 sq. Ta.] That of Oppert (in E. Ledrain, His- 
toire d? Israel, vol. I., p. 415) is infinitely superior, though not 
absolutely satisfactory. The fragment presents indeed great 
difficulties, owing to its mutilated condition. 

( 5 ) Ewald has, however, grouped some indications in such wis°, as 
to lead one to believe that the name of Adam, as the proper name 



The Creation of Man. 57 

rossus ( T ) give Adoros as the Grecised form of the ap- 
pellation of the first of the antediluvian patriarchs,( 2 ) 
and the original type of this name, Adiuru, has 
been discovered in the cuneiform inscriptions, where 
it is cited to indicate the origin itself of humanity. ( s ) 
Among the Greeks a tradition tells how Prome- 
theus, in the capacity of a true demiurge of the infe- 
rior order, formed man by moulding him out of clay( 4 ) 
at the beginning of all things, say some( 5 ) ; after the 
deluge of Deucalion, and the destruction of a primi- 
tive human race, according to others.( 6 ) This legend 
was immensely popular during the Roman epoch, and 
was frequently carved upon the sarcophagi of that 
period. But it appears to be the product of an intro- 
duction of foreign ideas, for not a trace of it is found 
in earlier epochs. In the genuinely ancient Greek 
poetry, Prometheus does not form man, but he ani- 
mates him and gifts him with intellect, by means of 
fire stolen from heaven, in consequence of which 
theft he falls a prey to the vengeance of Zeus. 
Such is the story of the Prometheus of iEschylus, 
as well as the rendering in Hesiod's Works and 

of the first man, /was not unknown to the Babylonians (Jahr- 
bucher der biblischen ' Wissenschaft, VIII., 1856, pp. 153, 290). 

( 1 ) Fragments 9, 10, 11 and 12 of my edition. 

( 2 ) The confirmation of the original Babylonian form of this 
name has proved that the former reading of the Greek text of 
Berossus, AAS2P02, should be corrected to AAQP02. 

( 3 ) See G. Smith in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical 
Archaeology, vol. III., p. 378. 

( 4 ) The people of Phocis fabled that it was with the earth of 
their country: Pausan., X., 4, 3. 

( 6 ) Apollo dor., I., 7, 1 ; Ovid, Metamorph., I., v. 82 et seq. 
( 6 ) Etym. Magn., v. Upo^e'vc ; Steph , Byz., v. 'Indviuv. 



58 The Beginnings of History. 

Days, which belongs to an epoch more ancient 
still. As to the birth of mortals, without pro- 
genitors, the oldest of all Greek legends, already 
regarded with scepticism by some individuals at the 
time when the poems adorned with the name of 
Homer were composed^ 1 ) described them as issuing 
spontaneously, or by a voluntary act of the gods,( 2 ) 
from the heated crust of the earth, or else from the 
rent trunk of the oak.( 3 ) The Italiotes held also to 
this last origin. ( 4 ) In the Scandinavian Mythology, 
the gods drew the first human beings forth from the 
trunks of trees, ( 5 ) and the same belief existed among 
the Germans.( 6 ) There are some very distinct traces 
of it in the Yedas of India, ( 7 ) and we shall presently 

(!) Odyss., T., v. 163. 

( 2 ) In Hesiod's Works and Days, the four successive humani- 
ties of the four ages, are created by the gods, and that of the 
bronze age is drawn from the oak-trees. 

( 3 ) Touching the idea of the Autochthony of the first men, thus 
regarded, see Welcker, Griechische Gcetierlehre, vol. I., pp. 777-787. 

(*) Virgil, Eneid, VIII., v. 313 et seq. ; Censorin, De die natal, 4. 

( 5 ) "One day Odin and his two brothers found in their road 
two trunks of trees, an ash and an alder. These two trunks had 
neither living soul, nor intelligence, nor a fair aspect. Odin en- 

\j dowed them with a living soul, Hcenir with intelligence, Lodur 
with blood and a fair aspect; these were the first *man and the 
first woman." Edda, Volospa, strophe 15, 16. See Stuhr, Nor- 
dische Alterthumer, p. 105. 

( 6 ) J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, vol. I., p. 337 et seq. 

(?) See the Memoir of Preller, Die Vorstellungen der Alien, 
besonders der Griechen, von dem Ursprung mid den seltesten Schick- 
salen des Menschlischen Geschlechts, in the Philologus of Go'ttingen 
for the year 1852. On the subject of the various legends about 
men being born of trees, it is well to consult also A. De Guberna- 
tis, Mythologie des Plantes, vol. I., pp. 36-44. 



The Creation of Man. 59 

find it, with some most remarkable peculiarities, 
among the Iranians of Bactriana and Persia^ 1 ) 

The religion of Zarathustra (Zoroaster) is the only 
one among the learned religions of the ancient world, 
which refers the creation to the voluntary act of 
a personal god, distinct from primordial matter.* 
Ahuramazda, the good and great god, is represented 
as creating the universe and man( 2 ) in six successive 
periods, which, instead of including only one week, as 
in the first chapter of Genesis, make, when taken all 
together, a year of 365 days ; ( 3 ) the creation of man 
finishing his work. The first of human beings who 
issued unblemished from the creator's hands, is called 
Gayomaretan, " mortal life."( 4 ) The most ancient of 
the Scriptures attributed to the prophet of Iran limit 
their revelations to this announcement ; ( 5 ) but we 

( x ) Another Greek tradition, which appears to be as ancient as 
this, makes man descend from the Titans. We will leave this 
unnoticed for the moment, as we shall have occasion to refer to it 
somewhat at length in chapters VII. and X. 

( 2 ) Bag a vazarka Auramazdd hya imam bumim add hya avam 
acmdnam add hya martiyam add hya siyatim add martiyahyd, "Au- 
ramazda is the great god; he created this earth, he created this 
heaven, he created man, he created propitious destiny for man.' r 
Such is the profession of faith which stands at the beginning of 
the great official inscriptions of the Achemenidean monarchs. 

( 3 ) See Spiegel, Avesta, vol. III., p. lii. et seq. ; Erdnische Alter- 
thumskunde, vol. I., p. 454 et seq. ; vol. II., p. 143. 

(*) In reference to this personage, it is well to consult the ap- 
pendix of Windischmann's book, Mithra, Ein Beitrag zur Mythen- 
geschichte des Orients. Leipzig, 1857. — For the signification of the 
name, see Spiegel, Erdnische Alter thumskunde, vol. I., p. 510. 

(5) Yagna, XIV., 18; XXVI., 14 and 33; LXVLL, 63; Vispe- 
red, XXIV., 3; Yescht, XIII., 86 and 87; see Spiegel, Avesta, 
vol. III., p. lv. 



60 The Beginnings of History. 

find a more detailed history of the origin of the 
human species in the book entitled Bundehesh, dedi- 
cated to the exposition of a complete cosmogony. 
This book is written in the Pahlevian tongue, and 
not in Zend, the language of Zoroaster's works ; and 
the edition which we possess is posterior to the con- 
quest of Persia by the Mussulmans. In spite of its 
recent date, being the work of Mazdseans, clinging 
with obstinate fidelity to their religion, and repelling 
every foreign influence, it contains traditions whose 
ancient and clearly indigenous character has been 
vouched for by competent scholars like Windisch- 
mann, Spiegel and Canon de Harlez. Criticism accepts 
this as an authentic source of information in regard 
to that portion of the records of Zoroastrianism 
which does not naturally find a place in the liturgic 
writings, sole remains of the ancient sacred litera- 
ture of Iran, which have been preserved through the 
lapse of ages. 

According to the Bundehesh, Ahuramazda com- 
pleted his act of creation by producing simultane- 
ously Gayomaretan or Gayomard, the typical man, 
and the typical bull, two creatures of perfect purity, 
vj who lived 3,000 years upon the earth, in a state of 
beatitude and without fear of evil, until the time 
when Angromainyus, the representative of the evil 
principle, began to make his power felt in the 
world. ( l ) His first act was to strike the typical bull 
dead ; ( 2 ) but useful plants sprang from the body of 
his victim,( 3 ) as well as domestic animals.( 4 ) Thirty 

(i) Chap. I. ( 2 ) Chap. IV. 

(3) Chap. X. ( 4 ) Chap. XIV. 



The Creation of Man. 61 

years later, Gayomaretan in his turn perished at the 
hands of Angromainyus.^) Nevertheless, the seed 
of the typical man, shed upon the ground at the time 
of his death, germinated at the end of forty years. 
From the soil there grew up a plant of reivas, the 
Rheum ribes of the botanists, a kind of rhubarb, used 
for food by the Iranians. In the centre of this plant 
a stalk rose, having the double form of a man and a 
woman joined together at the back. Ahuramazda 
divided them, endowed them with motion and ac- 
tivity, placed within them an intelligent soul, and 
bade them " to be humble of heart • to observe the 
law; to be pure in their thoughts, pure in their 
speech, pure in their actions." Thus were born 
Mashya and Mashyana, the pair from which all 
human beings are descended. ( 2 ) As Spiegel has 
remarked, ( 3 ) the succession of Gayomaretan and 
Mashya recalls the manner in which the genealogy 
of the antediluvian patriarchs in Genesis, according 
to the Jehovist ( 4 ) as well as the Elohist ( 5 ) document, 
places Enosh after Adam, his name also pointing 
him out as "the man." par excellence, the primordial 
and typical man.f) f 

The idea brought out in this story of the first 
human pair having originally formed a single andro- 
gynous being with two faces, separated later into two 



(!) Chap. IV. ( 2 ) Chap. XV. 

( 3 ) Eranische Atte?'thumskunde } vol. I., p. 457. 

( 4 ) Genesis iv. 26. ( 5 ) Genesis v. 6-11. 

( 6 ) Gayomaretan, in this story, is very similar to the Adam- 
Qadmon of the Kabbalists, celestial prototype of man, anterior to 
the terrestrial Adam. 



\J 



62 The Beginnings of History. 

personalities by the creative power, is likewise found 
among the Indians in the cosmogonic narration of 
Qatapatha Brdhmana.( l ) The last-named writing is 
included in the collection of the Rig- Veda, but is 
very much later in date than the composition of the 
hymns in the collection. The date of the compilation 
consequently wavers between the fourteenth century 
before our era, the approximate date of the more 
recent hymns, and the ninth century, when the col- 
lection of the Rig appears to have been definitely 
arranged, in all probability nearer the second than the 
first epoch. The story taken by Berossus from Chal- 
dean documents also speaks of " men with two heads, 
one of a man, the other of a woman, united on the 
same body, with both sexes together," in the primi- 
tive creation born from the womb of chaos before the 
production of the beings who actually people the 
earth. ( 2 ) Plato, in his Banquet^) makes Aristo- 

(!) Muir, Sanskrit Texts, 2d edition, vol. I., p. 25. 

( 2 ) Berossus, Frag. I. See our first appendix, I. E. 

( 3 ) P. 189 et seq. "In the beginning there were three sexes 
among men, not only the two which we still find at this time, 
male and female, but yet a third, partaking of the nature of each, 
which has disappeared, only leaving its name behind. In fact, 
the Androgyn existed then in name and in reality, being a mix- 
ture of the male and female sexes, though to-day the word is used 
only as an insult. Its appearance was human, but its shape 
round, the back and flanks forming a circle. It had four arms 
and as many legs, two faces precisely alike, crowning a rounded 
neck, with four ears in the same head, the attributes of the two 
sexes, and all else in proportion. It walked upright like an ordi- 
nary man, if it so pleased, but when wishing to run rapidly, it 
made use of its eight members, after the fashion of acrobats, who 
go like a wheel." [See Jowett's Plato, I., p. 483. Tr.] The nar- 
rative adds that the gods, separating the two halves of the andro- 



The Creation of Man. 63 

phanes to relate the history of the primordial andro- 
gens, separated afterwards by the gods into man 
and woman, a story which the philosophers of the 
Ionian school had borrowed from Asia and intro- 
duced into Greece. ( x ) One of the Phoenician cosmo- 
gonies, preserved in Greek under the name of San- 
choniathon,( 2 ) speaking of the first living beings, 
engendered in the womb of matter, still in the 
chaotic state, the Qopheshamem, or " contemplators of 
the heavens," appears to describe them as androgyns, 
similar to those of Plato, which separated into two 
sexes, when the light was divided from darkness,( 3 ) 
at the same time being gifted with intelligence and 
feeling. 

Following our Vulgate version, which agrees in 
this with the Greek version of the Septuagint, we are 
in the habit of stating that according to the Bible the 
first woman was made of a rib taken from Adam's 
side. Nevertheless, there is serious reason to doubt 
the exactness of this interpretation. The word geld, 
used here, signifies in all the other passages in the 
Bible where we meet with it, " side," and not " rib." 
Philologically, then, the most probable translation of 
the text of Genesis is that which we have adopted 
above : " Yahveh Elohim caused a deep sleep to fall 
upon the man, and he slept ; he took one of his sides, 

gyn, made them into male and female, who desire to come together 
in order to return to their primitive unity, whence the attraction 
of love. 

( x ) See Ch. Lenormant, Qusestio cur Plato Aristophanem in con- 
vivium induzerit, p. 19 et seq. 

( 2 ) It may be found farther on in the first Appendix, II. E. 

(3) C. W. Mansell, Gazette Archeologique, 1878, p. 137. 



\J 



64 The Beginnings of History. 

and closed up the place with flesh. — And Yahveh 
Elohim formed the side which he had taken from 
man into woman, and he led her to the man. — And 
the man said : " Now this is bone of my bone, and 
flesh of my flesh ; this shall be called isshdh (woman) 
because she has been taken from ish (man).") 1 ) 

So much for the account in the Jehovist document ; 
in the Elohist, we have, in the first place, " Elohim 
created man in his image ; . . . male and female 
created he them."( 2 ) The use of the plural pronoun 
seems at first sight to suggest the notion of a pair of 
two distinct individuals. But farther on this pro- 
noun seems, on the contrary, to apply to the nature 
of a double being, which, being male and female, 
constituted a single Adam. " Male and female cre- 
ated he them, and he blessed them, and named their 
name Adam."( 3 ) The text says Addm, and not 
hd'dddm with the article, and the following verse 
proves that the word here is taken as an appellation, 
a proper name, and not as a general designation 
of the species. Jewish tradition, too, in the Tar- 
gumim and the Talmud,( 4 ) as well as among learned 
philosophers like Moses Maimonides,( 5 ) does not hesi- 
tate to admit universally a similar interpretation, 
alleging that Adam was created man and woman at 
the same time, having two faces turned in two oppo- 
site directions, and that during a stupor the Creator 

( l ) Gen. ii. 21-23. ( 2 ) Gen. i. 28. ( s ) Gen. v. 2. 

( 4 ) Bereshith rabbd, sect. 8, fol. 6, col. 2; ' Erubin, fol. 18, a; 
Kethubhoth, fol. 18, a. 

( 6 ) More nebushim, II., 30, vol. II., p. 247, of Munk's trans- 
lation. 



The Creation of Man. 65 

separated Hawaii, his feminine half, from him, in 
order to make of her a distinct person. 

Among Christian ecclesiastical writers of the first 
centuries, Eusebius of Cesarea( 1 ) accepts likewise this 
interpretation of the Biblical text, and thinks that 
Plato's account of the primitive Androgyns agrees 
entirely with that in the Sacred Books.( 2 ) 

We may notice, furthermore, that the Gospel places 
in the mouth of Christ an allusion to the verse in 
Genesis on the creation of man : " Have you not read 
that He which made all at the beginning, made them 
male and female ? and that He said : ' For this cause 
the man shall leave his father and his mother and 
shall cleave to his wife ; and they shall be two in 
only one flesh ? So that they are no more two, but 
only one flesh. What therefore God hath united let 
not man put asunder."( 3 ) These words seem to claim 
the interpretation of the Jewish tradition, rather than 
that of the Latin Vulgate, for the Biblical passage to 
which they refer. They lose part of their force, un- 
less this is taken as a point of departure. Plato had 
previously represented the two halves, henceforth 
divided, of the primal Androgyn seeking forever to 

(!) Prsepar. Evangel., XII., p. 585. 

( 2 ) Several Catholic theologians have sustained and elucidated 
this interpretation ; among others, Augustin Steuco, of Gubbio, 
chosen by Pope Paul III. as one of his theologians at the Council 
of Trent, and Prefect of the Vatican Library (Cosmopoeia vel de 
Mundano Opificio, edit, in folio, Lyons, 1535, pp. 154-156), and 
Pr. Francesco Giorgi, of the Order of Minor Friars {In Scripturam 
Sacram et Philosophiam tria millia problemata, 1. I., sect. De mundi 
fabrica, probl. 29 ; Paris, 1522, in 4to, p. 5). 

( 3 ) Matt. xix. 4-6 ; cf. the parallel passage from Mark x. 6-9. 

5 



66 The Beginnings of History. 

be joined together again in a perfect union^ 1 ) The 
Saviour makes it the symbol of the sacred indis- 
solubleness of the marriage tie.( 2 ) 

( x ) " The cause of the desire for so perfect a mingling with the 
beloved person, that the two may henceforth be one, arises from 
the fact that our primitive nature was one and that we were 
beforetime an entirely perfect being. The desire for and the 
pursuit of this unity is called love." Banquet, p. 192. [See 
Jowett's Plato, I., p. 486. Tr.] 

( 2 ) It is evident, moreover, that in the thought which dictated 
the sequence of facts to the author of the ancient Jehovist docu- 
ment, as well as in that which governed the course of the final 
redactor of Genesis in making use of this document, the creation 
of the bodies of man and woman united in one, whence Hawaii 
should subsequently be derived, was intended to demonstrate em- 
phatically the primordial equality established by God between the 
human pair. The woman is given to the man as " a help meet for 
him" (Gen. ii. 18 and 20), and if she is subsequently subordi- 
nated to him, it is the special punishment for her share in the 
first sin (Gen. iii. 16). 



\J 



CHAPTEE IT. 

THE FIEST SIN". 

The idea of the Edenic happiness of the first 
human beings constitutes one of the universal tradi- 
tions. Among the Egyptians, the terrestrial reign 
of the god Ra, who inaugurated the existence of the 
world and of human life, was a golden age to which 
they continually looked back with regret and envy ; 
to assert the superiority of anything above all that 
imagination could set forth, it was sufficient to affirm 
that " its like had never been seen since the days of 
the god Ra."Q 

This belief in an age of happiness and of inno- 
cence in the infancy of mankind may likewise be 
found among all peoples of the Aryan or Japhetic 
race. It was among the beliefs held by them ante- 
rior to their dispersion, and it has been long since 
remarked by all scholars, that this is one of the 
points where their traditions find themselves most 
evidently on common ground with the Semitic stories 
which we find in Genesis. ( 2 ) 

(*) Masp^ro, Histoire Ancienne des peuples de V Orient, p. 38. 

( 2 ) See Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, 2d Edit., vol I., p. 
342 et seq. [3d Edit., vol. I., pp. 366 et seq. Eng Trans., vol. 
I., pp. 256 et seq. Tr.] — Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, vol. I., 
p. 528 et seq. [1st Ed.] — E. Burnouf, Bhagavata Pourdna, vol. III., 
Preface, p. xlviii. et seq. — Spiegel, in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen 
Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, vol. V., p. 229. — Maury, article Age, 

67 



Vi 



68 The Beginnings of History. 

But among the Aryan nations this belief is inti- 
mately connected with a conception which is peculiar 
to them, that of the four successive ages of the world. 
We find this conception most thoroughly developed 
in India. Created things, including humanity, are 
destined to endure 12,000 divine years, each one of 
which comprises 360 years of man. This enormous 
period of time is divided into four ages or epochs : 
the age of perfection, or Kritayuga ; the age of the 
triple sacrifice, meaning the perfect fulfilling of all 
religious duties, or Tretayuga; the age of doubt 
and growing obscurity as to religious ideas, or Dva- 
parayuga ; and finally the age of perdition, or Kali- 
yuga, which is the age now in progress, and which 
will end in the destruction of the world. ( l ) Among 
the Greeks, in Hesiod's Works and Days,( z ) we have 
exactly the same succession of ages, but their length 
is not reckoned in years, and the creation of a new 
human race is supposed to take place at the beginning 
of each. The gradual degeneracy which marks this 
succession of ages is expressed by the metals, the 
names of which are applied to them — gold, silver, 
brass and iron. Our present human condition is the 
age of iron, the worst of all, even though it did begin 
with the heroes. The Zoroastrian Mazdseism (Ma- 
in the Encyclopcdie nouvelle ; Histoire des religions de la Grece, vol. 
I., p. 371. — Ptenan, Histoires des langues semitiques, 1st Edit., p. 457. 
[4th Edit., p. 484. Tr.] 

(i) Thus it is that the system is explained in the Laws of 
Manu: I., 68-86. — For its ulterior developments, see Wilson, 
Vishnu Purdna, pp. 23-26 and 259-271 ; cf. p. 632. [Ed. 1840.] 

(2) V. 108-199. 



The First Sin. 69 

gism) likewise admits a theory of the four ages,^) 
which we find elucidated in the Bundehesh, ( 2 ) but 
in a form more nearly related to Hesiod's than to the 
Indian exposition, and devoid of the spirit of dreary 
fatalism which distinguishes the latter. The duration 
of the universe is there fixed at 12,000 years, divided 
into four periods of 3,000. During the first, all 
is pure; the good god, Ahuramazda, reigns alone 
over his creation, where evil has never yet shown 
itself; during the second age, Angromainyus comes 
forth from the darkness where he has hitherto re- 
mained quiescent, and declares war against Ahura- 
mazda^ 3 ) then it is that their struggle of 9,000 
years begins, filling three ages of the world. Dur- 
ing 3,000 years Angromainyus is unsuccessful ; for 
another 3,000 years the success of the two principles 
is equally balanced ; finally evil carries the day in 
the last age, w hich is the historic one ; but the con- 
test is destined to end in the final defeat of Angro- 
mainyus, which will be followed by the resurrection 
of the dead, and the eternal beatitude of the just, 
who are restored to life.( 4 ) The coming of the pro- 
phet of Iran, Zarathustra (Zoroaster), is placed at the 
end of the third age, precisely at the middle point of 
the period of 6,000 years, assigned to the human race 

(!) Theopompus, cited by the author of the treatise " On Isis 
and Osiris," attributed to Plutarch (c. 47), makes mention of the 
doctrine as existing among the Persians. For further details, 
consult on this point the memoir of Spiegel entitled Studien iiber 
das Zend-Avesta, vol. V. of the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenl. 
Gesellsch. 

( 2 ) Chap. XXXIV. ( 3 ) Bundehesh I. ( 4 ) Bundehesh, XXXI. 



70 The Beginnings of History. 

in its present conditions ; ( l ) and each of the millen- 
niums that follow will also end with the appearance 
of a prophet, first Ukchyat-creta, next Ukchyat- 
nenio, and finally Qaoshyant, who is destined to 
gain the final victory over the evil principle. 

Some too daring scholars, like Ewald( 2 ) and M. 
Maury, ( 3 ) have striven to discover in the general econ- 
omy of Biblical history traces of this system of the four 
ages of the world. But the impartial critic is forced 
to acknowledge that they have not been successful. 
The constructions upon which they have essayed to 
base their demonstrations are absolutely artificial, in 
contradiction with the spirit of the Biblical narrative, 
and they crumble of themselves. ( 4 ) M. Maury indeed 

(*) Spiegel, Eranische Alterthumskunde, vol. I., p. 507. 

( 2 ) Geschichte des Volkes Israel, 2d Ed., vol. I., pp. 342-348. [3d 
Ed., vol. I., pp. 366-373. Engl. Trans., vol. I., pp. 256-260. Tr.] 

(3) In the article Age, in the Encyclopedie Nouvelle. 

( 4 ) Ewald counts thus the four ages of the world, which he 
believes that he makes out in the Bible : 1st, from the Creation to 
the Deluge ; 2d, from the Deluge to Abraham ; 3d, from Abraham 
to Mosheh ; 4th, ever since the Mosaic dispensation. The epochs 
thus determined bear not the faintest resemblance to the ages of 
Hesiod or of the Laws of Manu. It is well, besides, to note that 
wherever we encounter, as among the Indians, the Iranians and 

\j the Greeks, the simultaneous existence of the theory of the four 
ages of the world and the tradition of the deluge, they are 
absolutely independent of each other, and without connection, a 
circumstance indicating a separate origin, springing from two 
sources which have nothing in common. Nowhere does the 
deluge coincide with the transition from one age of the world to 
another. 

Nevertheless, there is one point where a similarity may be 
established between the Indian narrations and those of the Bible. 
The Laws of Manu say that in the four successive ages of the 
world the length of human life went on decreasing in the pro- 



The First Sin. 71 

is the first to recognize the fundamental opposition 
between the Biblical tradition and the legends of 
Brahmanic India or of Hesiod.Q In the last, as he 
remarks, " there is no trace of a predisposition to sin, 
transmitted as a heritage by the first man to his 
descendants, not a vestige of original sin." Doubt- 
less, as Pascal has so eloquently said, " the knot of 
our condition does so wind and twist itself within 
this gulf that man becomes more incomprehensible 
without this mystery than this mystery is incompre- 
hensible to man ; " but the truth of the Fall and of 
the original taint is one against which human pride 
is most prone to revolt, that which it first attempts 
to put aside. And of all primitive traditions con- 
cerned with the infancy of humanity, this one it is 
which is most quickly forgotten. Men have repu- 
diated it ever since they have felt within them the 
risings of that sentiment of pride which gave the 

portion of 4, 3, 2, 1 ; in the Bible, the Antediluvian Patriarchs 
lived about 900 years, except Hanok, who was taken up alive to 
Heaven. Afterwards, Shem lived 600 years ; his first three 
descendants between 430 and 460, and the length of the lives of 
the four following generations is between 200 and 240 years ; 
finally, beginning with Abraham, the existence of the Patriarchs 
approaches the normal conditions, and the maximum does not 
reach 200 years. 

The Chaldean traditions also admit this gradual decrease of 
human existence, but add on many more ciphers at the beginning. 
Thus the first postdiluvian king reigned, according to Berossus 
(ap. Eusebius, Chronic. Armen., I., 4, p. 17, ed. Mai.), 2,400 years 
and his son 2,700. 

On an analogous indication in an original cuneiform fragment, 
see G. Smith, in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archss- 
ology, vol. III., p. 371. 

(*) Histoire des religions de la Grece, vol. I., p. 371. 



72 The Beginnings of History. 

inspiration to the progress of their civilization, their 
conquests over the material world. The religious 
philosophies which took root outside of that revela- 
tion whose depository was among the Chosen People, 
made no account whatever of the Fall. How, in fact, 
could this doctrine have been made to fit in with the 
dreams of pantheism and emanation ? 

In rejecting the idea of original sin, and in sub- 
stituting the doctrine of emanation for that of crea- 
tion, the majority of the peoples of pagan antiquity 
were led to the dreary conclusion inherent in the 
theory of the four ages, as admitted by the books of 
the Hindus and the poetry of Hesiod. This is the 
law of degeneracy and continuous deterioration which 
the ancient world seems to have felt weighing so 
heavily upon it. In proportion as time passes, and 
all things depart farther and farther from their 
focus of emanation, they become corrupted and 
grow worse and worse. It is the result of an inex- 
orable destiny and of the very force of their devel- 
opment. In this fatal evolution toward decline, 
there is no place left for human liberty ; everything 
turns in a circle, from which there is no means of 
v escape. With Hesiod each age marks a decadence 
from the preceding one, and, as the poet clearly 
shows, in the case of the Iron Age, initiated by 
heroes, each one of them taken separately follows the 
same downward course that characterizes the whole 
race.Q In India, the idea of the four ages, or 

(!) The same idea is found again in the Egyptian account of the 
succession of the terrestrial reigns of the gods, the demi-gods, 



The First Sin. 73 

yugas, gives birth, in the development and produc- 
tion of its natural consequences, to that of the 
manvantaras. In this new conception, the world, 
after having completed its four ages, always deterio- 
rating, is subjected to a dissolution, pralaya, when 
matter has arrived at such a pitch of corruption that 
it can subsist no longer ; then begins a new universe, 
with a new humanity, restricted to the same cycle of 
necessary and fatal evolutions, passing in their turn 
through their four yugas, until a new season of 
disintegration and dissolution comes ; and so on, ad 
infinitum. This is the fatality of destiny under the 
most cruelly inexorable form, which is at the same 
time the most destructive to all true morality. For 
where there is no liberty, there is no longer any 
responsibility; where corruption is the effect of an 
unalterable law of evolution, neither good nor evil 
have any longer a real existence. 

How much more consoling is the Bible theory, 
which at first sight seems so revolting to human 

heroes, and men, as collected from the fragments of Manetho, cor- 
roborated by the testimony of native texts. 

Though inferior to the two preceding, the third of those periods 
anterior to the mortal kings, that of the 'Hor-shesu or "Ser- 
vants of Horus," called curiously enough Manes, Ne/cwf, instead 
of Heroes (see Goodwin, Zeitschrift fur JEgyptische Sprache und 
Alter thumskunde, 1867, p. 49),* in the fragments of Manetho, yet 
appears as an age far superior to ours, an age of happiness and 
relative perfection (Chabas, Etudes sur Vantiquite historique, p. 7 et 
seq.). An inscription at Tombos, in Nubia, dating from the reign 
of Tahutmes I., says: "This is what was seen in the times of 
the gods, when were the 'Hor-shesu," by way of describing 
some perfect condition (Lepsius, Denkm'dler aus JEgypten und 
JEthiopien, Part III., pi. v., a). 



74 The Beginnings of History. 

j>ride, and what incomparable moral perspectives it 
opens to the soul ! It admits that man is fallen ; 
that almost immediately after his creation he lost his 
original purity and his Edenic felicity. In virtue of 
the law of heredity, which is everywhere stamped 
upon nature, the fault committed by the first ances- 
tors of humanity, in the exercise of their moral 
liberty, has condemned their descendants to suf- 
fering, and predisposes them to sin by the trans- 
mission of the original stain. But this predisposi- 
tion to sin does not fatally condemn man to commit 
it ; he can escape from it by the choice of his free 
will ; thus, by his personal efforts he may lift himself 
gradually out of the state of material deterioration 
and misery to which he has descended through the 
fault of the authors of his being. The four ages of 
the pagan conception unfold a picture of ever- 
increasing degeneracy. All the economy of the Bible 
history, from the first chapters of Genesis, offers us 
the spectacle of a continuous uplifting of the human 
race, starting from its original fall. On the one 
hand, the march is forever downward ; on the other, 
forever upward. The Old Testament, as a whole, 
\J takes but small account of this upward march, as 
affected by the development of material civilization, 
whose chief landmarks it nevertheless incidentally 
notices in a strikingly exact manner. AVhat it does 
follow, step by step, is the picture of moral progress, 
and the development, more and more evident, 
as time goes on, of religious truth, the concep- 
tion of which grows in spirituality, constantly be- 
coming purer and broader, among the chosen people, 



The First Sin. 75 

in a succession of steps, which are marked by 
the calling of Abraham ; the promulgation of the 
Mosaic Law; finally, the mission of the prophets, 
who in their turn announce the last and supreme 
attainment in this progress, resulting from the Ad- 
vent of the Messiah ; and the consequences of this 
last act of Providence will go on forever expanding 
in the world, tending to a perfection which has the 
infinite for its goal. This idea of recovery after 
a fall, the fruit of the free efforts of man, as- 
sisted by divine grace, and working within the 
limits of his strength for the consummation of the 
providential plan, the Old Testament exhibited in 
only one people, Israel. But the spirit of Christi- 
anity has broadened the outlook so as to include the 
universal history of the human race. And thus has 
been born the conception of that law of constant pro- 
gress, unknown to antiquity, to which our modern 
society is so unalterably attached, but which, and 
that we should never forget, is the offspring of 
Christianity^ 1 ) 

Let us turn now to the traditions of the first sin, 

( l ) Need I add that I reject with all the energy of my nature 
that theory of degeneracy, so eloquently expounded by Joseph de 
Maistre in the Soirees de Saint-Petersbourg, which in our days has 
unfortunately misled so many intellects, carried away by regret 
for a past which is entirely the creature of their imaginations ? This 
theory, as untenable in a scientific point of view as it is philosophi- 
cally monstrous, against which all the generous instincts of man 
revolt, is nothing but the renewal of the dreary conception of 
paganism as to the general march of history. It is curious that its 
author has never become aware of this. But his talent surpassed 
his science and overpowered his common sense, and I, for one, 
will never count myself among his disciples. 



\J 



76 The Beginnings of History. 

parallel to that one in Genesis, the account of which 
appertains to the Jehovist document. 

Zoroastrianism could not fail to admit this 
traditional story, and to preserve it. It would 
have created an analogous myth out of whole 
cloth, had one not been found ready to hand among 
the antique records, which it accommodated to its 
doctrine. This tradition fitted, in truth, too well 
into its system of dualism (on a spiritual founda- 
tion, though but partially freed from the confusion 
between the physical and moral worlds), for it 
explained in the most natural way how it was that 
man, a creature of the good god, and consequently 
perfect in his origin, had fallen in part under the 
power of the evil spirit, contracting thus the taint 
which made him subject to sin in the moral order, 
and in the natural order liable to death and to all 
the miseries which poison life on earth. The con- 
ception of the sin of the first authors of humanity, 
the heritage of which weighs unceasingly upon their 
descendants, is also a fundamental idea of the 
Mazdsean (magian) books. The modification of the 
legends relating to the first man, in the mythical 
forms of the last period of Zoroastrianism, even end 
by leading to a rather singular repetition of this 
remembrance of the first sin by several consecutive 
generations in the opening ages of human life. 

Originally — and this, at present, is one of the 
most firmly established of all points for science (*) — 

(i) Windischmann, Ursagen der Arischen Volker, in vol. XXX. 
of the Memoires de V Academic de Baviere ; Roth, Zeitschrift der 
Deutschen Morgenlsendischen Gesellschaft, vol. IV., p. 417 et seq. ; 



The First Sin. 77 

originally in those legends common to oriental Ary- 
ans prior to their separation into two branches, the 
first man was the personage called by the Iranians 
Yima, and by the Hindus Yama. Son of heaven 
and not of man, Yima united in his one indi- 
viduality those characteristics bestowed in Genesis 
separately upon Adam and Noah, the fathers of the 
two races of men, the antediluvian and the postdilu- 
vian. 1 Later he appears merely as the first king of 
the Iranians, although a king whose existence, like 
that of his subjects, is passed in the midst of Edenic 
beatitude, in the paradise of the Airy ana- Vaedja,( 2 ) 
abode of the earliest men. But after a season of 
pure and blameless living, Yima commits the sin 
which is to burden his descendants; and this sin, 
which causes him to lose his authority, and, driving 
him outside the paradisaic land, gives him over 
to the power of the serpent, the wicked spirit, 
Angromainyus,( 3 ) who ends by destroying him amid 
horrible torments. ( 4 ) We find an echo of this tradi- 
tion of the loss of paradise in consequence of a mis- 
deed prompted by the evil spirit in a fragment, 
incontestably one of the most ancient contained in 

Ad. Kuhn, Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte der Indogermanische 
Volker, in the Zeitschrift fur vergleichende Sprachforschung, vol. IV., 
Part 2; Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, vol. I., p. 519, [1st Ed.] 
furnish the proofs for the assertions which we can state but cursorily. 
(!) See de Harlez, Avesta, vol. I., p. 89; Spiegel, Eranische 
Alterthumskunde, vol. I., p. 439. 

( 2 ) Vendidad, II. ; it is also related here how Yima preserved 
the germs of men, animals and plants from the deluge. See fur- 
thermore Yesht, v. 25-27 ; ix. 8-12 ; xv. 15-17 ; Bundehesh, xvii. 

( 3 ) Yesht, xix. 31-38 ; Bundehesh, xxiii. and xxxiii. ; Sadder, 94. 
(*) Yesht, xix. 46. 



NJ 



78 The Beginnings of History. 

the collection of the sacred writings of the Zoroas- 
trians : ( l ) " I have created the first and the best of 
places and abodes, I, who am Ahuramazda : the Airy- 
ana- Vaedj a of excellent nature. But iu opposition 
to it, Angromainyus, the murderer, created a hostile 
thing, the serpent, issue of the river, and the 
winter, work of the Daevas." And this latter 
scourge it is, resulting from the power of the ser- 
pent, which compels the abandonment forever of the 
paradisaical region. 

Still later, Yima is no longer the first man, nor 
even the first king. The period of a thousand years 
attributed to his Edenic existence ( 2 ) is divided among 
several successive generations, which are spread over 
that length of time, commencing with the day when 
Gayomaretan, the typical man, begins to be the 
object of the hostile efforts of the evil spirit, and 
ending with the death of Yima.( 3 ) This is the 
system adopted by the Bundehesh. The story of 
the misdeed which cost Yima his Edenic happiness, 
by putting him in the power of his enemy, is always 
connected with this hero's name. But this error is 
now no longer the first sin, and that it may be fast- 
ened upon the ancestors from whom all men are 
descended, it is made double use of by being related 
previously of a first pair whose existence is altogether 
terrestrial and similar to that of other men, namely, 
Mashya and Mashyana. 

(i) Vendidad, I., 5-8. 

( 2 ) Yesht, xvii. 30. It is very noticeable that the life of Adam, 
which, according to Genesis, lasted 930 years, almost coincides 
with this period. 

( 3 ) See Spiegel, Eranische Alter thumskunde, vol. I., p. 504. 



The First Sin. 79 

" Man was, the father of the world was. He was 
destined for heaven on condition that he should be 
humble of heart ; that he should fulfil the work of 
the law with humility ; that he should be pure in his 
thoughts, pure in his speech, pure in his actions, and 
that he should not call upon the Daevas. With such 
inclinations, man and woman ought reciprocally to 
promote each other's happiness, and such indeed 
were their thoughts in the beginning; such their 
actions. They came together as man and wife. 

" At the first their speech was in this wise : t Ahu- 
ramazda gave the water, the land, the trees, the 
animals, the stars, the moon, the sun, and all good 
gifts which come of a pure root and of a pure 
fruit.' Afterward a lie crept into their thoughts and 
changed their natures, saying to them : i It is Angro- 
mainyus who has given the water, the land, the 
trees, the animals, and all that has been called by a 
name on the earth.' Thus it was that at the begin- 
ning Angromainyus deceived them in regard to the 
Daevas, and cruelly sought to beguile them to the 
end. In consequence of believing in this lie, both 
of them became like the demons, and their souls 
will be in hell until the renewal of the body. 

" They ate for thirty days, covered with black 
raiment. After these thirty days they went to the 
chase ; a white she-goat appeared before them ; they 
drew milk from her breasts with their mouths, and 
were nourished by this milk, which gave them much 
pleasure 

a The Daeva who told the lie became bolder; 
appeared a second time before them, and brought 



M 



80 The Beginnings of History. 

them fruits of which they ate, and in consequence of 
this, of the hundred advantages which they enjoyed, but 
one remained to them. 

" After thirty days and thirty nights, a sheep, fat 
and white, appeared before them ; they cut off his 
left ear. Taught by the heavenly Yazatas, they drew 
fire from the tree Konar by rubbing it with a frag- 
ment of wood. Both of them set fire to the tree; 
they quickened the fire with their mouth. They 
burned first bits of the tree Konar, afterwards of the 
date and myrtle trees. They roasted this sheep, which 
they divided in three portions.Q . . . Having 
eaten dog's flesh, they covered themselves with the 
skin of the animal. They then betook themselves to 
the chase and made themselves clothes of the skin of 
the deer."( 2 ) 

We may observe that here, just as in Genesis, 
vegetable food alone is used bv the first man in his 
state of purity and beatitude, the only kind allowed 
him by God,( 3 ) animal food only becoming lawful 
after the deluge.( 4 ) It was after their sin also that 
Adam and Havvah covered themselves with their 
first garments, which Yahveh himself fashioned for 
them out of the skins of beasts. ( 5 ) 

Not less striking is the story we meet with in the 
mythical traditions of the Scandinavians, preserved 

I 1 ) In the Yarna (xxxii. 8) it is Yima who teaches men to cut 
meat into bits, and to eat it. Windischmann (Zoroastrische Studien, 
p. 27) has compared this, with reason, with Genesis ix. 3. 

( 2 ) Bundehesh, xv. 

( 3 ) Genesis i. 29 ; ii. 9 and 16 ; iii. 2. 

( 4 ) Genesis ix. 3. 

( 5 ) Genesis iii. 21. 



The First Bin. 81 

in the Edda of Snorro Sturleson^ 1 ) which belongs 
to the cycle of Germanic legends also.( 2 ) The scene 
is not laid among mortals, but among beings of 
the divine race, the Asas. The immortal Idhunna 
dwelt with Bragi, the first of the skalds, or inspired 
singers, at Asgard, in Miclhgard, the middle of the- 
world, the paradise, in a state of perfect innocence. 
The gods had confided the apples of immortality to 
her care; but Loki, the crafty, the author of all 
evil, representative of the wicked principle, beguiled 
her with other apples, which he found, as he said, 
in a wood. She followed him thither to gather 
them ; but she was suddenly carried off by a giant, 
and happiness no longer abode in Asgard. 

George Smith, among the fragments of the Chaldeo- 
Assyrian Genesis discovered by him, believed that 
one might be interpreted as referring to the fall of 
the first man, and that it contained the curse pro- 
nounced against him by the god Ea, after his sin.( 3 ) 
But this was an illusion, which has been dispelled 
upon a closer study of the cuneiform document. 
Smith's translation, too hasty and immature, and 
scarcely intelligible beside, was erroneous from be- 
ginning to end.( 4 ) Since then, Oppert has given 

(!) Gylfaginning, strophe 26 and 33 ; Bragaroedkur, strophe 56. 

( 2 ) Raszmann, Deutsche Heldensage, vol. I., p. 55. 

( 3 ) Chaldean Account of Genesis, pp. 83 et seq. [Rer. Ed., 
pp. 75 et seq. , where Sayce agrees with Oppert in interpreting 
the tablet as a hymn to the god Ea. Tr. ] The original text is pub- 
lished in Friedrich Delitzsch's Assyrische Lesestucke, 2d Ed., p. 81. 

( 4 ) Friedrich Delitzsch made the same remark in the notes of 
his German translation of Smith's book (p. 301). 



\J 



82 The Beginnings of History. 

an entirely different rendering of the same text^ 1 ) 
the first of a really scientific character, in which 
the sense begins to show itself quite distinctly, 
though a number of obscure and uncertain details 
still remain. One point at least is settled, as far as 
we have gone, which is that this fragment has 
nothing whatever to do with the first sin and the 
curse of man. Hence we must absolutely exclude 
it from the range of our researches, and strive to 
warn all who may be tempted to use it in Bible 
commentary, on the authority of the English Assy- 
riologist who attributed to it such a significance. 

We have, then, no distinct and direct proof that 
the tradition of the first sin, as related in our 
Sacred Books, formed a part of the Babylonian 
and Chaldean accounts of the origin of the world 
and of man. Nor do we find the least allusion 
to it in the fragments of Berossus. This silence to 
the contrary notwithstanding, the parallelism of the 
Chaldean and Hebrew traditions, on this point as on 
others, has in its favor a probability so great that it 
is almost equivalent to a certainty. ( 2 ) Farther on 
we will refer to certain very convincing proofs of the 
existence of myths relating to the terrestrial paradise 
in the sacred traditions of the lower basin of the 
Euphrates and Tigris. ( 3 ) But it is expedient that we 
should pause a moment to study the representations of 

(*) In E. Ledrain's Histoire cT Israel, vol. I., p. 416 et seq. 

( 2 ) See what Friedrich Delitzsch says on this subject: G. 
Smith's Chaldxische Genesis, p. 305 et seq. 

( 3 ) See Fr. Lenormant's Essai de Commentaire des fragments cos- 
wogonique de Bcrosc, pp. 816-323. 



The First Bin. 83 

the mysterious and sacred plant, seen so often upon 
Assyrian bas-reliefs, guarded by celestial genii.Q So 
far, no inscription has come to light which might 
explain the meaning of this symbol, and we can but 
deplore such a lack, which will, however, doubt- 
less be eventually supplied by new documents. 
But from the study of the sculptured monuments 
alone, it is impossible to doubt the great import- 
ance of this sacred plant. Whether represented by 
itself, as sometimes is the case,( 2 ) adored by royal 
figures,( 3 ) or else, as I just remarked, guarded by 
genii in an attitude of adoration, this is incontestably 
one of the most lofty of religious emblems, and by 
way of stamping it with such a character, we fre- 
quently observe the symbolic image of the supreme 
deity, the winged disk, floating above the plant, sur- 
mounted or not, as the case may be, by a human 
bust.( 4 ) The cylinders of Babylonian or Assyrian 
workmanship present this emblem quite as fre- 
quently as do the bas-reliefs in the Assyrian palaces, 
and always under the same conditions, and with 
attributes of equal significance. ( 5 ) 

It is difficult not to connect this mysterious plant, 
which in every way asserts itself as a religious sym- 
bol of the first class, with the famed trees of Life 
and Knowledge which play so important a part in 

(*) Layard, Monuments of Nineveh, pi. 6, 7, 8, 9, 39, 44 and 47; 
Botta, Monument de Ninive, vol. II., pi. 139, 2. 

( 2 ) Botta, vol. II., pi. 119. 

(3) Layard, pi. 25. 

(*) Layard, pi. 6 and 39. 

( 5 ) Lajard, Culte de Mithra, pi. xvii., No. 5 ; xxvi., No. 8 ; xxvii., 
No. 2; liv., No. 5; liv. B, No. 3. 



\J 



84 The Beginnings of History. 

the story of the first sin^ 1 ) All . the traditions of 
paradise make mention of it ; the tradition of Genesis, 
which at times appears to admit two trees, one of Life 
and one of Knowledge,( 2 ) and again seems to speak 
of one only, uniting in itself both attributes, ( 3 ) in the 
midst of the garden of Eden ; the tradition of India, 
which calls this tree Kalpavrikcha, Kalpadruma or 
Kalpataru, " tree of desires or of times," and speaks 
of four of them, planted upon the four spurs of 
Mount Meru;( 4 ) and, finally, the tradition of the 
Iranians, which speaks at times of one tree springing 
out of the very midst of the holy fount Ardvi-cura, 
in the Airyana-vaedja ; ( 5 ) at times again of two, 
corresponding exactly with those described in the 
Gan-'Eden of the Bible.( 6 ) Such a correspondence 
is all the more natural, since the Sabseans or Man- 
dates, sectaries who are three parts pagan, inhabiting 
the environs of Bassorah, and who preserve a great 

(!) See Fr. Lenormant's Essai de Commentaire des fragments de 
Berose, pp. 323-380; Ewald, Lehre der Bibel von Gott, vol. III., p. 
72 ; E. Schrader, in the Jahrbucher fur protestantische Theologie, 
vol. I., p. 124 et seq. ; W. von Baudissin, Studien zur Semitischen 
Religions geschichte, vol. IT., p. 189 et seq. 

( 2 ) Genesis ii. 9. 

( 3 ) Genesis ii. 17 ; iii. 1-7. 

( 4 ) See Guigniaut's Religions de V Antiquite, vol. I., pp. 582- 
584; Obry, Du berceau de Vespece humaine, p. 20. 

( 5 ) Bundekesh, xxviii. 

( 6 ) Windischmann, Zoroastrische Studien, pp. 165-17 7 ; Spiegel, 
Erdnische Alterthumskunde, vol. I., p. 465. It was evidently from 
the Iranians that a part of the Tatar populations of Siberia 
received the notion of the tree of life, which occupies an impor- 
tant place in their popular traditions (A. Schiefner, Heldensagen 
der Minussinischen Tatare?i, p. 62 et seq. ). 



The First Sin. 85 

number of religious Babylonish traditions, are also 
familiar with the Tree of Life, designating it in their 
books under the name of Setarvan, "that which 
gives shade/ ? ( 1 ) The most ancient name of Babylon, 
in the idiom of the Antesemitic population, Tin-tir-ki, 
signifies "the place of the tree of life."( 2 ) In con- 
clusion, as has been well observed by Schrader,( 3 ) 
the figure of the sacred plant, which we connect 
with the tree of the Edenic traditions, appears as a 
symbol of eternal life upon the curious sarcophagi 
of enameled pottery belonging to the last epoch of 
Chaldean civilization, posterior to Alexander the 
Great, which have been discovered at Warka, the 
ancient Uruk. ( 4 ) 

The manner of representing this sacred plant 
varies on different Assyrian bas-reliefs, being more 

(*) Norberg, Codex JVasarseus, vol. III., p. 68 ; Onomast ad Codic, 
JVasar., p. 117. 

( 2 ) In fact, tin is the word "life" (Cuneiform Syllabary, A, No. 
153 ; see Fr. Lenormant, Etudes sur quelques parties des Syllabaircs 
cuneiformes, \ ix.) ; tir means "tree," or rather " grove, clump of 
trees" (Friedrich Delitzsch, Assyrische Studien, p. 120) ; in con- 
clusion, nothing is better known than the sense of the word kt, 
"land" and "place" (Syllabary, A, Nos. 182 and 183). All the 
premature interpretations given to the name Tir-tin-ki, in the 
beginning of the deciphering of the cuneiform inscriptions, such 
as "gate of life" (II. Rawlinson), "gate of justice" (Finzi), "city 
of the root of languages" (Fr. Lenormant), "city of the saved 
tribe" (Oppert), were absolutely false, and should be rejected, as 
well as the consequences which it was imagined could be built 
upon these vicious foundations. 

( 3 ) Jahrb'dcher filr protestantische Tlieologie, vol. I., p. 125. 

( 4 ) Loftus, Travels and Researches in Ohaldsea and Susiana, p. 
203 et seq. ; Birch, History of Ancient Pottery, vol. I., p. 150. 



86 The Beginnings of History. 

or less complex^ 1 ) It, however, always appears as a 
plant of medium height, inclining to a pyramidal 
shape, having a trunk furnished with numerous 
branches, and at its base a bunch of broad leaves. 
In a single instance,( 2 ) its vegetable species seems 
to be very accurately denned ; it is easy to recog- 
nize the Asclepias acida or Sarcostemma viminalls 
of the botanists, ( 3 ) the Soma plant of the Aryans 
of India and the Haoma of the Iranians, whose 
limbsj when incised, furnish the intoxicating liquor 
which is offered in libation to the gods, and which 
is identified with the celestial drink of life and 
immortality. But far more frequently the sacred 
plant assumes a conventional and decorative aspect, 
which corresponds exactly with no type in nature. ( 4 ) 
Now, it is precisely this wholly conventional figure, 
borrowed by the Persians from Assyro-Babylonian 
art, which represents Haoma on the gems, cylinders 
or cones of Persian workmanship, engraved during 
the period of the A.cha3inenida3.( 5 ) Such an adoption 

(*) See G. Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient 
Eastern World, 2d Edit., vol. II., p. 7 et seq., [1st Ed., vol. II., p. 
236, Tr.] ( 2 ) Botta, Monument de Ninive, vol. II., pi. 150. 

( 3 ) See Roxburgh, Flora Indica, vol. II., pi. 31. 

( 4 ) Mannhardt (Wald und Feldkulte, vol. II., p. 262) re- 
marks correctly that most frequently the representation appears 
to be copied from a kind of May -pole, artificially arranged ; dif- 
ferent plants being grouped together and tied with fillets. 

( 5 ) Lajard, Quite de Mithra, pi. xxxi., Nos. 1 and 6 ; xxxii., No. 3 ; 
xxxiv., No. 8; xxxix., No. 3; xlix., No. 9; lvii., No. 1. This 
image was still used with the same signification at the time of the 
Sassanides, and it is possible to follow the history of the strange 
vicissitudes which brought about its imitation as a motive of 
unmeaning ornamentation, first among the Arabs, then in some 



The First Sin. 87 

of the figure, most frequently used to represent the 
sacred tree of the Chaldeans and Assyrians, on the 
part of the Persians, to signify Haoma, though 
bearing no resemblance whatever to the genuine 
plant, proves that they recognized a certain analogy 
in the conception of the two emblems. In fact, 
adaptations of this nature were made with great 
discrimination by the Persians, and if they took 
Chaldeo- Assyrian art for model and instruction, they 
never adopted any among the religious symbols of 
the basin of the Euphrates and the Tigris which 
might not be made applicable to their own doc- 
trines, and indeed to an extremely pure form of 
Mazdseism. (*) The adoption of the figure of the 
divine Chaldeo- Assyrian tree, to represent their 
Haoma, therefore shows decisively that it was pos- 
sible to trace some kinship between these symbols, 
and in this connection we find a fresh proof in favor 
of the likeness which we are trying to establish 

occidental buildings of the Roman period (Ch. Lenormant, An- 
ciennes Etoffes du Mans et de Chinon, in the 3d vol. of Melanges 
d? Archeologie of Fathers Martin and Cahier). 

(!) Thus, of all the divine representations, they have preserved 
none except the emblematical figure of Ilu or of Asshur, the 
most elevated and least material of the personages of the Chaldeo- 
Assyrian Pantheon, the one who had most affinity with Ahura- 
mazda ; the celestial archangels, Igigi or Igaga, with four wings 
aud a perfectly human face, have become, as on the tomb of Cyrus, 
the Ameshagpentas of Zoroastrianism ; the monstrous images of 
supernatural beings and of the genii of the lower world have been 
assigned to the Daevas ; the combat of Adar, of Nergal, or of Mar- 
duk against these monsters, has furnished a plastic type of the 
combat of Ahuramazda against Angromainyus, or of the heavenly 
Yazatas against the infernal Daevas (see Fr. Lenormant, Essai de 
Commentaire des fragments de Berose, p. 327.) 



88 The Beginnings of History. 

between the genii-guarded plant on the Assyrian 
and Babylonian monuments and the tree of life of 
the Paradisaical traditions. Though the Hindus 
may have a diversity of opinions in regard to the 
nature of the mysterious trees of their terrestrial 
paradise of Meru, and even generally admit four 
different species ; Q though the Pehlevi Bundehesh, 
in giving the name of khembe( 2 ) to the tree of the 
Airyana-Vaedja, appears to have had in view the 
Nauelea Orientalis, called in Sanskrit kadamba^) 
one of the trees which the Hindus placed upon 
the spurs of Meru, still it is the "White Haoma," 
the typical Haoma, which, in the sacred books of the 
Mazdseans, almost invariably plays the part of the 
Paradisaical tree of life, rising from the midst of 
the fount Ardvi-cura, and distilling the drink of 
immortality. ( 4 ) The Hindu Aryans attached an 
analogous idea to their Soma, for the fermented 
liquor which they manufactured by crushing the 
branches of this plant in a mortar, and with which 
they made their libations to the gods, was called by 
them amritam, " ambrosia, the liquor which bestows 
immortality/' The Haoma and its sacred juice is 
\J likewise called "that which removes death/' in the 
ninth chapter of the Yagna of the Zoroastrians. It 
was for this reason that, among the Hindus and the 

(*) Obry, JDu berceau de Vespece humaine, p. 162 et seq. ; A. de 
Gubernatis, Mythologie des plantes, vol. I., p. 261. 

( 2 ) Bundehesh, xxx. 

( 3 ) Obry, Du berceau de T espece humaine, p. 156. 

( 4 ) Windischmann, Zoroastrische Studien, pp. 165-177; Spiegel, 
Eranische Alterthumskunde, vol. I., p. 465. 



The First Sin. 89 

Iranians, the personification of the plant and of the 
sacred liquor, the god Soma or Haoma, prototype of 
the Greek Dionysos, became a lunar divinity, in his 
quality of guardian of the ambrosia, stored by the 
gods in the moon.Q And at this point a final 
resemblance strikes us, in the fact that on the As- 
syrian bas-reliefs the sacred plant is guarded by 
winged genii, with the heads of eagles or of Percnop- 
terous vultures. There is a singular analogy between 
these symbolic beings and the Garuda, or rather 
Garudas,( 2 ) of the Aryans of India, genii, half men 
and half eagles. Now, in the Indian myths, and 
especially in the beautiful story of the Astiha- 
parva,( s ) it is Garuda who recovers the ambrosia, 
the amritam, or sacred juice of Soma, with which the 
libations are made, from the demons who have stolen 
it, and, on giving it back to the celestial gods, is 
made its keeper. His office, therefore, as well as 
that of the eagle-headed genii of the Assyrian monu- 
ments, beside the plant of life, is similar to the duty 
ascribed in Genesis^) to the kerubim which Yahveh 
placed at the gate of the garden of 'Eden, after the 

(!) See Langlois, Memoire sur la divinite vedique appelee Soma, in 
the Memoir es de V Academie des Inscriptions, new series, vol. XIX., 
2d part ; Windischmann, Ueber den Somakultus der Arier, in vol. 
IV. of the Memoir es de V Academie de Baviere. 

( 2 ) Baron Eckstein has settled the point of the plurality of 
these genii, who have appeared ever since the Vedic age as symbols 
of the highest divinities (Journal Asiatique, 1859, vol. II., p. 380 
etseq. ; 384-390). 

(3) This is the title of one of the sections of the immensely long 
Sanskrit epic, Mahabharata, 

(*) III., 24. 



M 



90 The Beginnings of History. 

driving forth of the first human pair, to defend the 
entrance, "and to keep the way of the tree of life.'^ 1 ) 
In one portion, at least, of Chaldea, properly so 
called, south of Babylon, it appears that the repre- 
sentative type which we have just been studying was 
not the one which there stood for the tree of life. 
The palm was in this region regarded as the sacred 
tree, the tree of Paradise, this being the tree which 
supplied the inhabitants with the better part of their 
nourishment, from whose fruit they decocted a fer- 
menting and intoxicating beverage, a kind of wine, 
the tree to which, in a popular song, they attributed 
as many benefactions as may be reckoned days in the 
year. ( 2 ) ( 3 ) We have the proof of it in the cylinders 

(*) We will recur to these kerubim in the following chapter. 

(2) Strab., XVI., p. 742. 

( 3 ) It is well to observe here that the palm is one of the trees 
to which Semitic paganism has most generally attributed a sacred 
character. W. Baudissin (Studien zur semitischen Religionsge- 
schichte, vol. II., pp. 201 et seq. ; 211 et seq.) has very satisfacto- 
rily grouped the facts which appear to prove the existence of this 
cult among the Phoenicians. In Southern Arabia we meet with 
the famous palm-tree, which the inhabitants of Nadjran, before 
their conversion to Christianity, adored as a divine Fetich (Caussin 
de Perceval, Histoire des Arabes avant V islamisme, vol. I., p. 125; 
Osiander, Zeitschrift der deutschen Morgenldndischen GeselL, vol. 
VII., p. 481). Among the Arabs of Hedjaz this tree was 
venerated in many places (Osiander, loc. cit.). The Qoreyshites 
adored the goddess Allat in the date-tree, Dhat anwat (Osi- 
ander, loc. cit. ; Krehl, Ueber die Religion der vorislamischen 
Araber, pp. 73 et seq.), as well as in another palm-tree, which 
was still to be found in Mecca in the days of Mo' hammed (Azragi, 
p. 82 ; see Dozy, die Israeliten zu Mekka, p. 19). The foremost of 
the heathen sanctuaries on the Sinaitic Peninsula, at Tor, a great 
resort for pilgrims, was surrounded by a magnificent grove of 
palm-trees, to which may be referred the name itself, ^olvlkuv, 



The First Sin. 91 

which show it surmounted by the emblem of the 
supreme deity, and guarded by two eagle-headed 
genii. ( x ) Besides, it is part of the essential charac- 
teristic of the tree of life that an intoxicating liquor 
may be extracted from its fruit, a beverage of immor- 
tality ; the books of the Sabseans or Manclaites also 
associate with the tree Setarvan, the " fragrant vine," 
Sam-Gufuo, above which floats " the supreme Life,"( 2 ) 
after the same fashion that the emblematic image of 
the divinity, under its loftiest and most abstract form, 
hovers over the plant of life, in the monumental 
representations of Babylonia and Assyria. ( 3 ) And 

given, by the Greeks to this locality (Agatharchid. ap. C. Miiller, 
Geogr. Grace. Min., vol. I., pp. 176-178; Strab., XVI., p. 777; 
Nonnos, ap. C. Miiller, Frag, historic, grace., vol. IV., p. 179; see 
Ritter, Erdkunde Asien, vol. XIII., p. 773 ; Fresnel, Journal Asia- 
tique, Janvier-Fevrier, 1871, pp. 81 et seq.). The Kaabah was 
also surrounded, at first, by a sacred grove of palm-trees, which 
stood until the time of Qocay, who cut them down, that he might 
build the city of Mecca, and had much difficulty in persuading the 
Qoreyshites to consent to it (Caussin de Perceval, Histoire des 
Arabes, vol. I., p. 236). 

(*) Lajard, Culte de Mithra, pi. lxi., No. 6. 

( 2 ) Norberg, Codex Nasareeus, vol. III., p. 68 ; Onomast. ad Cod. 
Nasar., p. 111. 

( 3 ) The Chaldeo-Assyrians frequently made use of another 
symbolic element in making up the conventional type of their 
tree of life. In a large number of representations a symme- 
trical arrangement of branches projects from and encircles the 
plant, each branch terminating in a pine or cedar cone, though 
the artist has bestowed upon the plant neither the foliage 
nor the form of a conifer (Gr. Ptawlinson, The Five Great 
Monarchies of the Eastern World, 2d Ed., vol. II., p. 7 [4th Ed., 
lb. ; 1st Ed., II., p. 236. Tr.] ; W. Baudissin, Studien zur 
Semitischen Religionsgeschichte, vol. II., p. 190). It is this apple of 
pine or cedar which, in the Assyrian sculptures, the gods and 



\J 



92 The Beginnings of History. 

genii carry so frequently in their hands, always presenting it 
point forward, whether they are guarding the tree of life, or 
accompanying the king, as his protectors. In the latter case, the 
point of the vegetable cone is always turned in the direction of 
the monarch, "as though it were the medium of communication 
between the protector and the protected, the instrument by means 
of which grace and power passed from the genius to the mortal 
whom he had under his care" (G. Rawlinson, The Five Great 
Monarchies of the Eastern World, 2d Ed., vol. II., p. 29 [4th 
Ed., lb. ; 1st Ed., II., p. 263. Tr.]). Often, indeed, it is held 
under the king's nose, that he may breathe it; for it is always 
through the nostrils that the breath of life is communicated, 
according to the ideas of the Chaldeo-Assyrians, as well as in 
the conceptions of the Egyptians and in Genesis (ii. 7). An 
invocation to the god Marduk reads thus: " Asshur-bani-abal, 
the shepherd, thy neocorus, breathe life into his nostrils," 
Assur-bani-abal ri'u zaninka bullitsu uppisu (Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. 
Asia, vol. IV., pi. 18, 2, 1. 33). 

W. Baudissin (Studien, vol. II., p. 190) sees here in the fruit 
of the coniferous plant a Phallic symbol. With much greater pen- 
etration M. Heuzey, some years since, put the following query, 
apropos of the sacred sign of the protecting genii presenting a 
pine-apple or cedar cone to the king: "Was this a sign of con- 
juration, and was the fruit of the pine, on account of its pointed 
shape, recalling as it did the fire that purifies, or for some different 
reason, classed by the Orientals among the objects which had 
power to nullify witchcraft and sickness ? Would it then be for 
a similar reason that the pine-apple figured in the hand of Escu- 
lapius, in the chryselephantine statue, chiseled by Calamis for 
the Sicyonians (Pausan., II., 10, 3)? I submit these queries to 
the scholars who devote themselves to the study of the ancient 
religions of the Orient" (Revue Archeologique, new series, vol. 
XIX., p. 4). In the conjecture which he offers under this modest 
and dubitative form, the learned academician showed a correct 
insight. The decipherment of the cuneiform texts enables us to- 
day to affirm it past doubt. For instance, in a Magic fragment, as 
yet unedited, the god Ea, the Av err uncus par excellence, the vivifier 
and preserver of the human race, which he has created, prescribes 
to his son, Marduk, the mediator, a mysterious rite, which will cure 
a man whose malady is caused by an attack of demons. "Take," 



The First Sin. 93 

here we should note that the ancient Accadian name 
for the " vine," applied equally by extension and as 
a term of abuse to " wine," ges-tin,( l ) is a compound, 
signifying properly "tree of life," or even more 
exactly u wood of life," of the two well known 
words gis, ges, " wood," and tin, " life." ( 2 ) 

So much for the Tree of Life. As to the Tree of 
Knowledge of Good and Evil, when distinct from 
the first, W. Baudissin( 3 ) has very justly remarked 
that its conception is intimately connected with 
that of the tree regarded as prophetic, revealing 

he says to him, " the fruit of the cedar, and hold it in front of the 
sick person ; the cedar is the tree which gives the pure charm, 
and repels the inimical demons, who lay snares." Kirim erini liqi 
va — ana pi margi lukunsu — erinu igu nadin dpti ellitiv — tarid rabigi 
limnuti. In another bit, where not all the lines of the ancient 
Accadian text are accompanied by their Assyrian translation, 
the Magic rite is different, though the cedar still plays a most 
important part in it (Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 16, 
2), [obv., 1. 30-35. Tr.] " Take a vessel and put water in it," said 
Ea to his son (Accad., dug sarra a umenisi ; Assyrian version, mS 
mulli, " filled with water") ; " . . . put in it some wood of white 
cedar (Accad., gis erin parra scibi umenisi), and introduce the charm 
which comes from Eridu (the city where Ea resides), thus power- 
fully completing the virtue of the enchanted waters (Accad., namru 
NunMga uammunnisita a.bi namru sugal umenidu ; the last member 
of the sentence has only an Assyrian rendering : me lipti rabi's 
suklul)." The cedar cone, or the pine-apple, is therefore the 
emblem and the instrument of the "Life Charm," sipat balati, of 
which Ei is the master, and his son Marduk the dispenser 
(see Cuneiform Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 29, 1, obv., 1. 
30, 31). And when fruits of this nature adorn the sacred plant, 
they characterize it more emphatically than ever as the tree of life. 
( x ) Cuneiform Syllabary, A, No. 154. 

( 2 ) F. Lenormant, Etudes sur guelques parties des Syllabaires Cu- 
neif ormes, % x. 

( 3 ) Studien zar Semitischcn Religionsgeschichte, vol. II., p. 227. 



94 The Beginnings of History. 

the secrets of the future, and serving to interpret the 
divine will. ( l ) It is, therefore, necessary here to 
note that trees played a considerable part in Chal- 
daic divination, ( 2 ) and that we hear of a Phyllo- 
mancy among the Assyrians. ( 3 ) In Palestine we 
meet with the famous "oak of the diviners," eldn 
me'dnenim, near Shekem,( 4 ) the palm-tree under 
which Deborah prophesied,( 5 ) the oak of 'Ophrah, 
where the angel of Yahveh appeared to Gide'6n,( 6 ) 
and beneath which that Judge raised an altar to 
God. ( 7 ) David consulted Yahveh in the bal- 
sams, and the " going in their tops " made known 
to him the passing of God, who was to go out 
before him to lead him to battle. ( 8 ) It may be 

( x ) It is not only in the Semitic world that one meets with a 
belief in prophetic trees. In Greece we have the " talking oaks" 
of Dodona (Eschyl., Prometh., v. 830; comp. Homer, Iliad II., v. 
233 ; Odyss. E, v. 327), the most ancient oracle of the Pelasgians, 
the fratricidal laurel tree of Delos, which, by its trembling, gave 
forth presages (Virgil, JEneid. III., v. 73 et seq.), and that of 
Delphis (Homer, Hymn, in Apoll., v. 393). The Etruscans 
divided trees into favorable and unfavorable, according to the 
nature of their presages (Macrob., Saturn II. 16). 

i 2 ) G. Smith, North British Review, January, 1870, p. 311 [Am. 
Ed., p. 164. Tr.] ; Fr. Lenormant, La Divination et la Science des 
\j Presages chez les Chaldeans, p. 85. 

( 3 ) Mich. Pseil., Be operat. dsemon., p. 42, ed. Boissonnade. 

( 4 ) Judges ix. 37. See W. Baudissin, Studien zur Semitischen 
Religionensgeschichte, vol. II., p. 225, 226. 

( 5 ) Judges iv. 5. 

( G ) Judges vi. 11 and 19. 

( 7 j Judges vi. 24. 

( 8 ) 2 Samuel v. 24 ; 1 Chron. xiv. 15 ; see Ewald, Geschichte des 
Volkes Israels, 2d Ed., vol. III., p. 188 ("3d Ed., vol. III., p. 200; 
Eng. Trans., vol. III., p. 147. Tr.] ; Lehre der Bibel von Gott, 
vol. I., p. 234. 



The First Sin. 95 

seen by this example that the orthodox He- 
brews held, like the nations that surrounded them, 
to the prophetic meaning in the agitation and 
rustling of the leaves of trees ; for them, the divine 
will could make of each and any tree, a tree of 
knowledge and of understanding. The Arabs, before 
the days of Islam, had likewise their prophetic tree 
in the Samurah [Spina JEgyptiaca), carrying the 
thorns as talismans^ 1 ) one specimen being adored 
among the Beni-Ghatafan as the image of the goddess 
El-'Uzza, ( 2 ) and the Nabateans regarding the iree 
with equal veneration. ( 3 ) They believed that a voice, 
foretelling the future, issued from the thorny thickets 
called gharqad.i 4 ) The manifestation of the "angel 
of Yahveh," maldh Yakveh, to Mosheh (Moses), in 

(*) Nowai'ry, cited by Rasmussen, Additamenta, p. 65. 
(*) Osiander, Zeitschr. der Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch., vol. VII., 
p. 486. 

(3) They held it to be the tree of Bel (A. Levy, Zeitschr. der 
Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesells., vol. XIV., p. 432). This tree is probably 
the one which the Chaldeo-Assyrians called samullu and designated 
by a complex ideograph, signifying "tree of light" {Cuneif. In- 
scrip. of West. Asia, vol. II., pi. 45, 1. 49, d-e). It received 
divine worship, and its name (preceded orthographically by the 
determinative of "god") entered as the name of a divinity into 
the composition of the proper name of the brother of Asshur- 
bani-abal, Samul-shum-yukin (see G. Smith, History of Assur- 
banipal, p. 201), "Samul has established the name." A temple 
consecrated to the god Shin, at Babylon, was called "the Temple 
of the Great Tree Samul;" in Accadian, S-gissir-gal ; in Assyrian, 
bit-samulli-rabi (inscr. of Nabu-kudurri-ucur, called that " Of the 
East India Company," col 4, 1. 25-28 [Can. Inscr. West. Asia, I., 
pi. 61. Tr.] ; and in the bilingual hymn to Shin, Cuneif. Inscr. 
of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 9, obv., 1. 11, 12). 

( 4 ) Aghdni, ed. Kosegarten, vol. I., p. 21. 



VJ 



96 The Beginnings of History. 

a burning bush in the desert of Horeb,^) belongs to 
the same class of conceptions. ( 2 ) 

The image of the Tree of Life among the Chal- 
deo- Assyrians was the object of a genuine divine 
cult; the simulacra seem to have been arranged 
after the fashion of the old-fashioned May-poles 
of Western Europe, ( 3 ) and trees laden with all 
kinds of attributes and ornaments were carried every 
year in springtime, as symbols of life, to be burned 
in the court of the temple of ? Atar-'Ate (Atergatis), 
at Hierapolis, in Syria.( 4 ) In the representations of 
the monument known under the name of " Lord 
Aberdeen's Black Stone," which is supposed to 
have belonged to the religious foundations of the 
King Asshur-alj-idin (Esarhaddon), at Babylon, 
we see this simulacrum placed, idol-fashion, in a 
naos, which is surmounted by a cidaris, or upright 
tiara, adorned with several pairs of borns.( 5 ) Hence 
it has been identified as a divinity. Here we should 

(!) Exod.iii. 

( 2 ) Such a comparison may perhaps savor of temerity to some 
persons, whom I should be sincerely sorry to scandalize. But, to 
my mind, this implies no doubt cast upon the reality or the 
miraculous character of the occurrence. God's communications 
with man always assume that form which is most likely to impress 
the mind as colored by reigning ideas. It is thus that the Bible 
visions always wear the coloring of their surroundings ; thus it 
happens, for instance, that Yoseph's dreams, in Genesis, are 
purely Egyptian on their formal side, and those in the days of the 
Prophets purely Assyrian, noticeably in the case of Yehezqel 
(Ezekiel), who wrote during the Captivity. 

( 3 ) Mannhardt, Wald-und Feldkulte, vol. II., p. 262. 

(*) Lucian, De dea Syr., 49 ; see W. Baudissin, Sludien zur Se- 
mitischen Religionsgeschichte, vol. II , p. 210. 

( 5 ) Fergusson, The Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis, p. 298. 



The First /Sin. 97 

make room for George Rawlinson's very inge- 
nious observation ( l ) upon the relation which the 
Assyrian works of symbolic art established between 
this image and the god Asshur, who hovers above 
it in his quality of celestial god. As has been 
rernarked,( 2 ) the tree of life below him seems to be 
the emblem of a female terrestrial divinity, pre- 
siding over earthly life and fertility, who must 
have been associated with him. This association of 
the deity with the tree of paradise, above which he 
hovers, gives us a plastic expression of the cosmogo- 
nic pair, recalling that of Uranos and Ge among the 
Greeks, ( 3 ) personifying the firmament and the ter- 
restrial soil with its vegetation, the work of the 
second and third days of Creation, attributed to them 
in the Assyrian Genesis, the fragments of wdiich have 
been discovered by George Smith. I refer now to 
Asshur and the goddess supposed to be his consort, 
a goddess who kept,( 4 ) at Babylon, her old Acca- 

(*) The Five Great Monarchies, 2d Ed., vol. II., pp. 6 et seq. [4th 
Ed., ib. ; 1st Ed., vol. II., pp. 235 et seq. Tr.] 

( 2 ) Schlottmann, article Astarte, in Riehm's Handwcerterbuch des 
Bxblischen Alterthums, p. 112 ; W. Baudissin, Studien, vol. II., 
p. 192. 

( 3 ) The pair of divinities called in Accadian Shar and Ki-shar 
(varied by Shar-gal and Kishar-gal, or Eni-shar and Nin-shar, 
"The Lord of Production" and "The Lady of Production") ; in 
Semitic Assyrian, Asshur and Sheruya, is said to be a form of 
Anu and Anat, and is explained by the Heaven and the Earth 
(Cuneiform Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. II., pi. 54, 1. 1-7, 8, obv., 
e-f; vol. III., pi. 69, 1, 1. 1-11 ; see the first appendix at the end 
of this volume, I. B). 

( 4 ) We discover this from Damascius' Chaldaio Cosmogony, 
which may be found in the first appendix at the end of this 
volume, I. A. 

7 



98 The Beginnings of History. 

dian name of Ki-shar, "the earth Avhich yields her 
increase," " the fruitful earth," while in Assyria she 
was designated by the Semitic name of Sheruya^ 1 ) 
coming from the same root as Asshur, with the 
elimination of the first radical. Thus we discover 
simultaneously the prototype and the origin of the 
name of the Asherd/i, that pillar, more or less richly 
ornamented, which formed the consecrated idol image 
of the terrestrial goddess of fertility and of life in 
the Canaanite worship of Palestine, so often made 
mention of in the Bible.( 2 ) The fact that apart from 
this cult there existed in the cosmogonic traditions of 
the Chaldeans and Babylonians a myth regarding the 
tree of life and the fruit of Paradise, the action of 
which closely resembled in form the Bible narrative 
of the temptation, seems positively established, in the 
absence of written records, by the representation on a 
cylinder of hard stone, preserved in the British 
Museum/ 3 ) whereon are seen a man and a woman, 

( x ) Ouneif. Inscr. of West. Asia, vol. III., p. 00, obv., 1. 9, a, 
and 1. 31, d ; see II. Rawlinson in G. Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. 
I., p. 589. [Appleton's Am. Ed., I, p. 479 Tr.] 

( 2 ) On the Asherdh, see chiefly Movers, Die Phainizier, vol. I., 
pp. 500-084 ; Genesius, Thesaurus, p. 102; Sehlottmann, article 
Astarte, in the Iiandwcerterbuch des Biblischen Alterthums (Iliehrn) ; 
W. Eaudisrdn, Studien, vol. II., p. 218 et seq. 

The identity of the sacred plant of the Assyrian monuments 
w $j the Ashiu'uh of Palestine has been already maintained by 
Fcrgjuf^P 11 (The Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis, pp. 299-801], 
and by (^.'Rawlinson (The Five Great Monarchies, 2d Edit., vol. 

ii., p. 8 [Yth [ ; :,L > ib - ; ]st Ed -> vo1 - IL > pp- 236 > 237 - Tr 0- 

( 3 ) Laiard Cil^ e de Mithra, pi. xvi., No. 4; Fr. Lenormant, 
Essai de CommentdT e des Fragments de Berose, p. 831 ; G. Smith, 
Chaldean Account f^ me ^ P- 91 [ Rev - E<1 -> P' 88 - Te -1 5 Vi g" 
ouroux, La Bible et l es decouverles modemes, 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 199. 



The First Sin. 99 

the first wearing on his head the kind of turban 
peculiar to the Babylonians,^) seated face to face, on 
either side of a tree, with horizontal branches, from 
which hang two large bunches of fruit, one in front 
of each of these personages, who are in the act of 
stretching out their hands to pluck them. Behind 
the woman a serpent uprears itself. This illustra- 
tion might be used to illustrate the narrative of 
Genesis, and as Friedrich Delitzsch ( 2 ) has remarked, 
is capable of no other explanation. 

M. Renan( 3 ) does not hesitate to join forces with 
the ancient commentators, in seeking to recover a 
trace of the same tradition among the Phoenicians, 
in the fragments of Sanchoniathon, translated into 
Greek by Philo of By bios. In fact, it is there 
said, in speaking of the first human pair, and of 
JEon, which seems to be the translation of Havvdh 
(in Phoenician ffavdth), and stands in her relation 
to the other member of the pair, that this personage 
"has found out how to obtain nourishment from 
the fruits of the tree."( 4 ) The learned academician 
even goes so far as to think that here may be found 
the echo of some type of Phoenician sculpture, which 
perhaps delineated a scene similar to the transaction 

The cylinder is of Babylonish workmanship, and belongs to a very 
ancient epoch. 

( a ) This head-gear, frequently represented upon the monu- 
ments, is mentioned as characteristic of the Chaldeans by the 
Prophet Yehezqel, xxiii. 15. 

( 2 ) G. Smith's Chaldaische Genesis, p. 305. 

( 3 ) Memoires de V Aeademie des Inscriptions, new series, vol. 
XXIII., 2d Part, p. 259. 

( 4 ) Sanchoniathon, p. 14, ed. Orelli ; see the first appendix at 
the end of this volume, II. E. 



VJ 



100 The Beginnings of History. 

of Genesis, and akin to the presentment on the Baby- 
lonian cylinder. Certain it is, that at the epoch of 
the great influx of Oriental traditions into the classic 
world, a representation of this nature appears upon 
several Roman sarcophagi, where it undoubtedly 
indicates the introduction of a legend analogous to 
the narrative of Genesis, and akin to the myth of the 
formation of man by Prometheus^ 1 ) A famous sar- 
cophagus in the Museum of the Capitol ( 2 ) exhibits, 
close beside the Titan, son of Japetos, who is finishing 
his task of moulding, the pair, man and woman, in 
a state of primitive nudity, standing at the foot of a 
tree, the man in the act of gathering the fruit.( 3 ) A 
bas-relief, incrusted in the wall of the little garden of 
Villa Albani, at Rome, presents the same group, but 
more closely conformed to the Hebrew tradition, 
since a great snake twists itself about the trunk of 
the tree under whose shadow the two mortals are 

( x ) See Ottfr. Miiller, Handbuch der Archeeologie, \ 396, 3. 

( 2 ) Foggini, Mus. Capitol, vol. IV., pi. xxv. ; Millin, Galerie My. 
thologique, pi. xciii., No. 383. 

( 3 ) Panofka [Annates de V Institut Archeologiquc, vol. IV., p. 81 
et seq.) would give to this pair the names of Deucalion and 
Pyrrha ; the first, son of Prometheus ; the second, daughter of 
Pandora, authors of the new human race, after the Deluge. To 
this we see no objection, if at the same time it be admitted that 
the monument informs us of the introduction of a legend analo- 
gous to that of Adam and Havvah, under the names of the first 
mentioned individuals. One might readily conceive the region of 
Iconium, in Asia Minor, as having been the theatre of such an 
introduction, for here it was that local tradition supposed the 
formation of man by Prometheus to have taken place immediately 
after Deucalion's deluge, with incidents singularly resembling the 
Biblical ones: Steph. Byzant., v. 'IkSvwv. 



The First Sin. 101 

standing^ 1 ) It was this plastic type which was imi- 
tated aud reproduced by the earliest Christian artists, 
when creating their representations of the fall of the 
first parents of the human race, a subject frequently 
reproduced by their painters and sculptors.( 2 ) On 
the sarcophagus at the Capitol, the presence, beside 
Prometheus, of a Fate casting the horoscope of the 
man whom the Titan is in the act of forming, is 
calculated to make one suspect an influence exerted 
upon the subjects worked out by the sculptor, from 
the doctrines of those Chaldean astrologers spread 
over the Gra;co-Roman world in the last centuries 
before the Christian era, and specially rising to high 
credit at Rome, though indeed the date of the monu- 
ments to which we have referred makes it possible 
that this presentation of the story of the first human 
pair in connection with the tree of Paradise, from 
which they are about to eat the fruit, may have been 
obtained directly from the Old Testament itself, as 
readily as from the cosmogonic myths of Chaldea or 
Phoenicia. 

But I find incontrovertible evidence of the exist- 
ence of such a tradition in the cycle of indigenous 
legends of the people of Kena'an, since the discovery 
of a curious vase, painted in the Phoenician manner, 
dating back to the seventh or sixth century B. C, 
and found by General di Cesnola in one of the most 

(*) Monument described by Panofka, in the memoir already 
quoted. 

( 2 ) Upon the sacred style of presenting this scene, see the 
article Adam et Eve, in the excellent Dictionnaire des Antiquites 
Chretiennes of the Abbe Martigny. 



102 The Beginnings of History. 

ancient sepulchres of Idalium, on the island of Cy- 
prus.^) We trace thereupon a tree with foliage, 
from the lower branches of which hang, on either 
side, two great bunches of fruit ; a huge serpent 
approaches the tree with an undulatoiy motion, and 
is in the act of opening his jaw to seize one of the 
fruits.( 2 ) 

[ 1 ) Di Cesnola, Cyprus, its Ancient Cities, Tombs and Temples, 
p. 101. This vase is at present preserved in the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, in New York. 

( 2 ) We must keep ourselves in check, that we may not be 
carried away by exaggerated resemblances ; for which reason we 
will not carry these comparisons any further, though it might be 
easy to do so in a direction which we will be content to indicate 
briefly. It is difficult not to find an affinity between the Para- 
disaical tree of the cosmogonic Asian traditions and the tree with 
the golden apples in the garden of the Hesperides, guarded by the 
serpent, which the sculptured monuments always represent as 
wrapped round its trunk. In the myth, incontestably of Phoeni- 
cian origin, in which Hercules slays the serpent- guardian of the 
Hesperidean tree, and takes possession of the golden apples, we 
see the revenge taken by the god of light and of the sun, winning 
back the tree of life from the powers of darkness, jealousy and 
enmity, personified by the serpent, who got possession of it in the 
beginning of the world. It was thus that in the Hindu myth the 
gods recovered the ambrosia from the Asuras, or demons, who had 
stolen it. Let us further observe that Hercules, the conqueror 
of the dragon of the Hesperides, is likewise the liberator of Pro- 
metheus, who was the first to pluck the fruit from the celestial 
and cosmical tree, namely, fire, in spite of the divine prohibition ; 
and the legend even relates the performance of these two exploits 
in the course of a single expedition of the god. The scene of the 
first adventure was located to the west of Libya, the abode of 
the daughters of Hesperos, the Evening Star, who rose on the 
horizon near the spot where the sun had disappeared, close to 
the place where Atlas supported the weight of the celestial vault ; 
or else, according to Apollodoros (II., 5, 11), it was supposed to 
have been among the Hyperboreans, " on the night-side," as 



The First Sin. 103 

One is of course in the right in doubting whether, 
in Chaldea, and still more in Phoenicia, the tradition 
parallel to the Bible narrative of the Fall had a signi- 
ficance as exclusively spiritual as in Genesis ; and even 
whether it contained the same moral lesson as may 
be traced in the recital of the Zoroastrian books. 
The grossly materialistic spirit of Pantheism, charac- 
terizing the religion of these countries, opposes an 
invincible obstacle to such an idea. Nevertheless, it 
should be remarked, that among the Chaldeans and 
their Assyrian disciples, at least up to a certain 
epoch, the conception of the nature of sin and the 
necessity for repentance is found more exactly 
expressed than generally among the nations of anti- 
quity,^) and consequently it is difficult to believe 

Hesiod puts it (Theogon., v. 275; comp. v. 215), that Heraclcs- 
Melqarth went to look for the fruits of life, fire and light, the 
approach to which was forbidden by the dragon Ladon, son of 
Typhaon and Echidna. His exploit is each day repeated, with 
the alternating, periodical triumph of light and darkness, and as 
Preller has justly remarked (G-riechische Myihologie, 2d Ed., vol. 
II., p. 216 et seq., wherein all the variations of the legend of the 
conquests of the Hesperidean fruits are admirably collated), the 
god returning from the country of the Hesperides with the golden 
apples, is the sun, reappearing in the East, after having plunged 
beneath the waves at his setting, bringing back with him those 
luminous rays which he has regained from \h^ night, and having 
rejuvenated himself by means of the fruits of life in the garden of 
the gods. Preller before us did not hesitate (Griech. Mythol., 2d 
Ed., vol. I., p. 439) to compare the garden of delights, inhabited 
by the Hesperides, with its fountain of ambrosia (Euripid. Hippol., 
v. 743 et seq.) and its tree of golden apples, with the Gan-'Eden 
of the Bible, its spring, and tree of life. He also compares Idhun- 
na's golden apples in the Scandinavian and Germanic legend. 

(*) See Fr. Lenormant in The Academy, 20th July, 1878; Die 
Magie und Wahrsagekunst der Chaldder, pp. 60-68. 



\J 



104 The Beginnings of History. 

that the priesthood of Chaldea, with its profound 
speculations in religious philosophy, did not seek to 
find a solution for the problem of the origin of evil 
and sin. 

With the reservation implied by this last remark, 
it is likely that the Chaldean and Phoenician legends 
concerning the fruit of the Paradise tree were near 
akin in spirit to the cycle of the old myths, common 
to all branches of the Aryan race, to the study 
of which Adalbert Kuhn has dedicated a deeply 
interesting book. ( x ) These are the myths which 
refer to the invention of fire and the beverage 
of Life ; they are found in their most ancient form 
in the Vedas, and have become naturalized, and more 
or less modified by the lapse of time, among the 
Greeks, the Romans and the Slavs, as well as among 
the Iranians and Hindus. The fundamental concep- 
tion of these myths, which never appear in perfection 
except under their oldest forms, represents the uni- 
verse as an enormous tree, with its roots clasping the 
earth and its branches shaping the vault of heaven. ( 2 ) 

(!) Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des GoettertranJcs, Berlin, 
1859. See the important articles of F. Baudry on this book, in 
the Revue Germanique for 1861 ; see also A. de Gubernatis, My- 
thologie des Plantes, vol. I., pp. 93-98. 

( 2 ) On the existence of the notion of a cosmic tree among the 
Chaldeo-Babylonians, see C. W. Mansell, Gazette Archeologique, 
1878, p. 133. W. Baudissin is wrong in supposing it unknown 
to the Phoenicians (Studien zur Semitischen Religionsgeschichte, vol. 
II., p. 192). Schlottmann remarks, on the other hand, and 
with justice, that this conception is inherent in the similitude 
established between the tree of life and the terrestrial goddess, 
associated with the celestial deity Asshur (article Astarte, in the 
Handwcerterbuch des Biblischen Alterthums (Riehm), p. 112). 



The First Sin. 105 

The fruit of this tree is fire, indispensable to the 
existence of man, and the material symbol of intelli- 
gence ; from its leaves is distilled the drink of life. 
The gods have reserved the proprietorship of the fire 
for themselves ; it sometimes descends to earth in the 
thunderbolt, but men are not allowed to produce it 
themselves. The individual who, like the Prome- 
theus of the Greeks, discovers the process by which a 
flame may be artificially kindled, and communicates 
it to other men, is an impious person, who has stolen 
the forbidden fruit from the sacred tree ; he is 
accursed, and the vengeance of the gods pursues him 
and his race. 

The analogy of form between the myths and the 
Bible narrative is striking. It is doubtless the same 
tradition, but apprehended in quite another sense, 
symbolizing an invention in the material order, 
instead of being applied to the fundamental fact in the 
moral order, and additionally disfigured by the mon- 
strous conception, too frequent among pagans, which 
represents the divinity as a terrible and malignant 
power, jealous of the happiness and progress of 
men^ 1 ) The spirit of error among the Gentiles had 

Among the myths borrowed by the philosopher Pherecydes, of 
Syros, from the mysterious books of the Phoenicians (Hesych. 
Miles., De sapient., v. ^epeavSTjg), there figured that of the "winged 
oak" (vnoTtrepoc dpvg), over which Zeus had spread a magnificent 
veil, representing the constellations, the earth and the ocean 
(Maxim. Tyr., Dissert., X., 4; Clem. Alex. Stromat., VI., 2, p. 
741 ; see Jacobi in the Theologische Studien of Ullmann and Um- 
breit, 1851, vol. I., p. 207). Manifestly here we have the cosmic 
tree again. See, besides, the first appendix at the end of this 
volume, III. 

(!) God would in truth assume this character, if one were to 



\J 



106 The Beginnings of History. 

changed this mysterious symbolic reminder of the 
event which decided the condition of humanity. 

accept the interpretation given by some Talmudists lost in un- 
wholesome speculations (see Eisenmeuger, Entdecktes Judenthum, 
vol. I., p. 871 et seq. ), developed by Cornelius Agrippa of Cologne, 
at the commencement of the sixteenth century, in his treatise Be 
originali peccato, and lately started afresh by M. Schoebel, in a 
dissertation in which one regrets to see so much science expended 
on so false an object [La mythe de lafemme et du serpent, etude sur 
les origines d'une evolution psychologique prirnordiale, Paris, 1876). 
This interpretation is one which would fain see in the forbidden 
fruit of the tree of knowledge the symbol of the natural act by 
which alone the human race can be perpetuated, that act the per- 
formance of which has been elevated, purified and consecrated by 
the institution of marriage. 

Thus, that which God had specially interdicted to man would 
be the act by means of which his species is preserved conform- 
ably to the laws of nature! This would suppose Him jealous 
of the prolonged existence of the being He had just created, of 
whom He had so lately said, "it is not good for him to be alone" 
(Genesis ii. 18), and to whom he had given a "help-meet!" 
Everything in the Bible account protests against such a blasphemy 
(the authors of which were evidently unable to measure its conse- 
quences), not only the ancient Elohist account, but the Jehovist 
version as well. Far from such a condition, immediately subse- 
quent upon the creation of the first human pair (whether the Elohist 
author regarded them as already divided or still united as a single 
individual), we find Elohim saying to them, as to all living crea- 
tures : "Be fruitful, and multiply!" (Genesis i. 28.) There is 
nothing in the Bible at all resembling the strange dialogue placed 
by one of the hymns of the Big-Veda (sect. vii. , lect. vi. , hymn 5, 
translation of Langlois) into the mouths of Yama and Yami, the 
first man and the first woman, in which the man refuses to form 
any connection with the woman for fear of committing an impiety, 
because she is his sister. However, the intention of this Vedic 
hymn appears to have been, not the condemnation of the sexual 
union, as regulated by marriage, but a precaution against the 
consequences destructive to the laws of the family, which might 
possibly have followed from the example of the first human pair 
in legitimatizing and authorizing incest. 



The First Sin. 107 

The inspired author of the Jehovist document, incor- 
porated in Genesis, and, after him, the final editor of 
the book adapted it under the very form which it 
had worn to the material sense ; but he restored its 
true meaning, and drew from it its solemn teaching. 

Some observations are needful in regard to the 
animal form which clothes the tempter in the Bible 
narrative, the serpent, who played an analogous part 
in the legends of Chaldea and Phoenicia, as the sculp- 
tured monuments have just shown us. 

The serpent, or, to speak more exactly, the dif- 
ferent species of serpents hold a very considerable 
place in the religious symbolism of the people of 
antiquity. These creatures are there used with the 
most opposite meanings, and it would be contrary to 
all the rules of criticism to group together and in 
confusion, as has been done by scholars of former 
times, the very contradictory notions attached in this 
way to the different serpents in the ancient myths, in 
such wise as to create a vast ophiolatric system,^) 
derived from a single source, ( 2 ) and made to harmo- 
nize with the narration of Genesis. But side by side 

(*) Fergusson's monumental work {Tree and Serpent Worship. 
London, 1868) is not absolutely free from this defect, the learned 
author having therein displayed more erudition and ingenuity 
than critical ability, and having allowed himself to be a little too 
much carried away by the attraction of system. 

( 2 ) Here is a very bright remark of Max Miiller's: "There is 
an Aryan, there is a Semitic, there is a Turanian, there is an 
African serpent, and who but an evolutionist would dare to say 
that all these conceptions came from one and the same original 
source, that they are all held together by one traditional chain?" 
{The Academy, 1874, p. 548.) 



VJ 



108 The Beginnings of History. 

with divine serpents of an essentially favorable and 
protective character, oracular, or allied with the gods 
of health, of life or of healing, we find in all mytho- 
logies a gigantic serpent, personifying the nocturnal, 
hostile power, the evil principle, material darkness 
and moral wickedness^ 1 ) 

Among the Egyptians, it is the serpent Apap, who 
fights against the Slid, and whom 7 Hor pierces with 
his weapon. ( 2 ) Among the Chaldeo- Assyrians, we 
find mention of a great serpent called " the Enemy 
of the Gods," aiub ilani.( B ) We are distinctly told 
that Pherecydes of Syros ( 4 ) borrowed from the Phoe- 
nician mythology his story of the old Ophion, the 
serpent-god, first master of heaven, precipitated with 

(!) Wolf Baudissin has devoted an admirable section of the 
first volume of his Studien zur Semitischen Religionsgeschichte to the 
study of the subject, regarded from a Semitic point of view: Die 
Symbolik der Schlange im Semitismus, insbesondere im Alien Tes- 
tament. [Studien, I., pp. 257 et seq. Tr.] 

( 2 ) See the monumental representations collected in Wilkin- 
son's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, edition of 
1878, vol. III., p. 155. The victory of Horus over Apap is the 
subject of the thirty-ninth chapter of the Book of the Dead. 

( 3 ) Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, vol. II., pi. 5, 1. 39. 
[5, cf.] c-d; pi. 24, 1. 9, e-f 

The myth of the great cosmogonic battle between Tiamat, per- 
sonification of the chaotic world, and the god Marduk, contained 
in a portion of the epic fragments in cuneiform writing, discovered 
by George Smith, need not be introduced here. Tiamat there 
assumes the form of a monster, which makes its appearance in 
different places on the monuments of art ; but the form is not that 
of a serpent. See, besides, the original story of the battle of 
Marduk against Tiamat, in the first appendix at the end of this 
volume, I. F. 

(*) Euseb., Prteparat. Evangel., I. [x., 41, ed. Migne] ; Orelli, 
Sanchoniath. fragm., p. 47. 



The First 8in. 109 

his companions into Tartarus by the god Cronos 
(ll), who triumphs over him at the beginning of all 
things,^) a story strikingly analogous to the history 
of the defeat of the "old Serpent who is the calum- 
niator;, and Satan/ 7 cast down and shut up in the 
abyss, which did not figure in the Old Testament, but 
existed in the oral traditions of the Hebrews, and has 
found a place in chapters xii. and xx. of St. John's 
Apocalypse.^) 

Mazdaeism is the only religion in the symbolism 
of which the serpent never appears, except as an 
evil agent, for even in the Bible its significance 
is sometimes good, as in the case of the history of the 
Brazen Serpent,( 3 ) the reason of this being that in the 

(!) Origen, Adv. Cels., VI., p. 303 ; Apollon. Rhod., Argonaut., 
I., v. 503 et seq. ; Tzetz ad Lycophr., Cassandra, v. 1191 ; comp. 
the first appendix at the end of this volume, III. P-T. On the 
oriental charactei of this myth, see Jacobi, in the Theologische 
Studien of Ullmann and Umbreit, 1851, vol. I. ; p. 203. 

( 2 ) In verse 3 of chapter xii. of the Apocalypse this dragon is 
described as red in color and having seven heads. In a lyric 
piece of religious Chaldean poetry, "the huge seven-headed ser- 
pent who pounds the waves of the sea" is spoken of ( Ouneif. Inscr. 
of West. Asia, vol. II., pi. 19, No. 2, 1. 13-17), and this serpent 
appears to be identical with the one which is called "Enemy of 
the Gods," and is described as being red in color (Cuneif. Inscrip. 
of West. Asia, vol. II., pi. 24, 1. 9, e-f). 

( 3 ) On the Brazen Serpent, see Ewald, Geschichte des VolJces 
Israels, 3d Ed., vol. II., p. 249 et seq. [Eng. Trans., vol. II., pp. 
176 et seq. Tr.] ; Koehler, article Schlange, in the Real-Encyclo- 
psedie of Herzog, vol. XIII., p. 565 [1st Ed.] ; (Ehler, Theologie des 
Alten Testaments, vol. I., p. 116 et seq. [Eng. Trans., vol. I., p. 112 
et seq. Tr.] ; De Wette, Archseologie, 4th Ed. , by Rabiger (1864), 
p. 341 ; Kuenen, De Godsdienst van Israel, vol. I., p. 284 et seq. 
[Eng. Trans., vol. I., pp. 288 et seq. Tr.] ; Tiele, Eg. en Mes. 
Godsdienst, p. 551 ; W. Baudissin, Studien zur Semitischen Religions- 



110 The Beginnings of History. 

conception of Zoroastrian dualism the animal itself 
belongs to the impure and adverse creation of the 
Evil Principle. It was under the form of a great 
serpent, too, that Angromainyus, after having en- 
deavored to corrupt heaven, leaped upon the earthy 1 ) 
and under this form he fights Mithra, the god of the 
pure sky;( 2 ) finally, it is under this form that he 
will one day be overcome, chained for three thousand 
years, and at the end of the world be burned in 
liquefying metals. ( 3 ) 

In these Zoroastrian narratives, Angromainyus, 
under the form of a serpent, is the emblem of wick- 
edness, the personification of the evil spirit, just as 
clearly as is the serpent of Genesis, and that, too, in 

geschichte, vol. I., p. 288 et seq. Consult also, if desired, but with 
a good deal of reserve : G. C. Kern, Ueber die eherne Schlange, in 
Bengel's Archiv. f. d. Theolog., vol. V. (1822), p. 396 et seq. ; Fr. 
Funk, Dissertatio inauguralis historico-medica de Nehuschthane et 
JEsculapie serpente, Berlin, 1826; E. Meier, Ueber die eherne 
Schlange, in Baur & Zeller's Theolog. Jahrbilcher, vol. XIII. (1854), 
p. 585 et seq. ; Gottfr. Menken, Ueber die eherne Schlange, in his 
Schriften, vol. VI. (1858). pp. 349-411. 

(i) Bundehesh, III. — " The serpent Angromainyus, full to the 
brim with death," was spoken of as early as the Vendidad, XXII., 
5 and 6. 

( 2 ) See the dissertation of Windischmann, Mithra, ein Beitrag 
zur My then geschichte des Orients, Leipzig, 1857. 

(3) Bundehesh, XXXI. The serpent is made the impersonation 
of several secondary forms of the evil principle, divers mytholo- 
gical beings, created by Angromainyus to ravage the earth, and 
make war upon all good, and the true faith, such as Azhi-Dahaka 
(the biting serpent), vanquished by Thrgetaona (Spiegel, Avesta, 
vol. III., p. lx) and the dragon Cruvara. slain by the hero Ke- 
recacpa (Spiegel, Avesta, vol. III., p. lxviii. ). For further details 
concerning the part enacted by the serpent in Iranian mythology, 
see A. de Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, vol. II., p. 412 et seq. 



The First Bin. Ill 

a sense almost as thoroughly spiritual. On the 
other hand, in the Vfclas, the same myth of the 
battle against the serpent is presented to us in a 
purely naturalistic character, depicting, under the 
most transparent guise, an atmospheric phenomenon. 
The narrative most frequently recurring in the old 
hymns of the Aryans of India, during their primitive 
epoch, is that of the combat of Indra, god of the 
luminous sky and of the azure, against Ahi, the 
serpent, or Vritra, personifications of the storm- 
cloud, which spreads and grows as it creeps through 
the sky. Indra overpowers Ahi, strikes him with 
his thunderbolt, and in tearing him asunder gives 
free vent to the fertilizing waters which he held 
imprisoned within his person^ 1 ) In the Vedas the 
myth never rises above this purely physical phe- 
nomenon, nor in any way passes from the representa- 
tion of the elemental conflicts in the atmosphere to 
that of the moral war between good and evil, of 
which it is the expression in Mazdseism. 

This myth of the thunderstorm is taken as the 
pivot of a general explanation of the religions of 
antiquity by a certain school of modern mythologists, 
of whom Adalbert Kuhn is the most brilliant example 
in Germany. Especially, they say, must the fun- 
damental source, the origin and the true significance 
of the traditions we have just passed in review, 
including the Bible narrative of the Fall, be sought 
for in the naturalistic fable of the Vedas.( 2 ) Doubt- 

( 1 ) See Maury, Croyances et legendes d : ' antiquite, 2d Ed., pp. 
96-110; Histoire des religions de la Grece, vol. I., p. 130 et seq. 

( 2 ) This is the theory maintained by M. Breal, with much 
talent and profound learning, in his dissertation on Hercule et 
Cacus, Paris, 1863. 



VJ 



112 The Beginnings of History, 

less, the allegory which suggested the myth was 
familiar to the Hebrews themselves. We find it 
distinctly set forth in a verse of the Book of Iyob,^) 
where it is said of God : " His breath gives serenity 
to the sky ; his hand pierces the outspread serpent/' 
In fact, in the parallelism of the two sections of the 
verse, the first determines the intention of the 
second. ( 2 ) But the Vedic myth is only one of 
the applications of a symbolic story, of a non- Aryan 
origin, which goes very much farther back into the 
primitive past of humanity, before the ethnic divi- 
sion of the ancestors of the Egyptians, the Semites 
and the Aryans, the three great races represented by 
the three sons of Noah ; this we know, since we 
meet it, without exception, among them all. The 
pastoral tribes with whom originated the hymns 
of the Vedas, far removed from high civilization, 
whether material or intellectual, only associated with 
it the conception of a restricted, almost childish, na- 
turalism, with special application to this phenomenon, 
by which the conditions of their simple existence 
were most affected. But in the case of the Egyptians, 
we find the same myth with a much loftier and more 
general interpretation. With them the serpent Apap 
is not the storm-cloud ; he is the personification of 
the darkness which the Sun, under the form of B-a 
or 7 PIor,( 3 ) contends against, during his nocturnal 
passage around the lower hemisphere, and over 

(i) XXVI. , 13. 

( 2 ) See Sclilottmann, Das Buck Hiob, p. 101 et seq. ; W. Bau- 
dissin, Studien zur Semitischen Religionsgeschichte, vol. I., p. 285. 

( 3 ) He specially represents the rising sun. 



The First Sin. 113 

which he is destined to triumph before reappearing 
in the East.( T ) The conflict of ? Hor with A pap is 
ever renewed at the seventh hour of the night, ( 2 ) a 
little before the sun-rising, and the thirty-ninth 
chapter of the Booh of the Dead demonstrates that 
this conflict between light and darkness was looked 
upon by the Egyptians as the emblem of the moral 
conflict between good and evil.( 3 ) The serpent in 
the paradisaical legends of Chaidea and Phoenicia is 
no longer the thunder-cloud, but suggests the narra- 
tive of Genesis. ( 4 ) The zigzag movements of the 

( 1 ) Pierret, Dictionnaire d' Archeologie Egyptienne, p. 55. 

( 2 ) Pierret, Etudes egyptologiques, II., p. 118. 

( 3 ) See Fr. Lenormant, La Magie chez les Chaldeens, p. 75 [Eng. 
Trans., p. 83. Tr.]. 

(4) After passing in review the numerous traditions of various 
nations, gathered together in Mr. Fergusson's book, Tree and 
Serpent Worship, a good part, however, having been set aside that 
we might devote ourselves exclusively to those most nearly related 
to the Bible narrative and belonging to a certain group of civiliza- 
tions — it should be remarked that a large number of legends and 
cult-forms which associate the serpent with the tree of life, attach 
to this creature no idea whatever of reprobation, or personification 
of evil ; neither do they attribute to him the part of a tempter, as 
in the story of Genesis and in the parallel traditions of Zoroas- 
trianism. On the contrary, the serpent therein wears a favorable 
aspect ; he is divine like the tree, equally worshipped, and com- 
pletes its significance as a symbol of wisdom and knowledge (see 
A. de Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, vol. I., p. 397), or else of 
life, of rejuvenation and of eternity. Indeed, in Genesis the ser- 
pent is ''subtle beyond all the beasts which Yahveh Elohim had 
made" (iii. 1). and acts as a real revealer of knowledge, though 
in a bad and culpable sense. 

The story which the compiler of the book has incorporated from 
the ancient Jehovist document is of a kind to suggest to us the 
probability of the parallel existence, among the neighboring peo- 
ples, of a similar narrative, in which the serpent is described as 



114 The Beginnings of History. 

clouds across the sky may have suggested — though I 
am loath to make a poiut of it without beiug more 
absolutely certain of my grounds — the first germ of 
the idea of making the serpent the terrible image of 
a powerful adversary, in whose conception were com- 
bined the intimately associated ideas of darkness and 
of evil, by a confusion of the physical and moral 
order, which no antique religion, not even Mazdseism, 
has ever been able entirely to separate, with the sole 
exception of that of the Hebrews. But the great 
serpent, among all the highly civilized peoples whose 

presenting man with the fruit of knowledge, and be'coming the inter- 
mediary of a divine revelation. Bat this revelation was idolatrous, 
and is indignantly rebuked in the sacred book, since idolatry is the 
most heinous of sins. It is after this wise that Sir Henry Rawlinson 
understands the story of the Fall in Genesis, in its relation to the 
Chaldeo-Babylonian myths, thinking he can perceive traces of the 
fact that the serpent was an emblem of Ea, in his character of god 
of wisdom. (In G. Rawlinson' s English Herodotus, vol. I., p. 600. 
[Am. Ed., p. 488. Tr.] ) So far nothing has transpired either 
to confirm or contradict, in a direct manner, this conjecture of the 
illustrious pioneer in Assyriological studies. We can only be 
quite sure that the serpent was ixndoubtedly a symbol of life to 
the Chaldeo-Assyrians. One of its generic names in the Assyrian 
Semitic tongue is havvu (Fred. Delitzsch, Assyrische Studien, p. 
09), like the Arabian hiyah, both derived from the root kdvah, 
\j "to live." On the very valuable monument, just published by 
M. Clermont-Ganneau (Revue Archeologique, new series, December, 
1879), with which we should associate another, edited by Lajard 
(Monuments inedits de V Institut Archeologique, vol. III., pi. xxxvi., 
No. 1), Goula, goddess of the resurrection, she who "brings the 
dead to life" (as she is described in Cuneiform Inscr. of West. Asia, 
vol. II., pi. 62, 1. 50, e-f), standing on her sacred bark, which 
floats upon the waters of the river of the dead, is represented 
under a form uniting various animal shapes, and holds serpents 
in her hands, as emblematic of life and renewal. 



The First Sin. 115 

traditions we have scrutinized, is symbolical of this 
dark and evil power in its broadest conception. 

However it may be, my Christian faith is not in 
the least affected by the admission that the inspired 
compiler of Genesis used, in relating the Fall of the 
first human pair, a narrative which had assumed an 
entirely mythical character among the surrounding 
peoples, and that the form of the serpent attributed 
to the tempter may in its origin have been an essen- 
tially naturalistic symbol. Nothing compels us to 
accept in its literal sense the story of the third 
chapter of Genesis. One is perfectly justified, with- 
out for a moment departing from the orthodox belief, 
in considering it as a figure, intended to impress a 
fact of a purely moral order upon the senses. Hence 
it is not the form of the narrative which makes the 
difference, but the dogma which it expresses/ 1 ) and 

(*) " Historic, legendary and mythical tradition, partly oral, 
partly written," says M. Noeldeke (Histoire litteraire de V Anci'en 
Testament, French translation, p. 10), "forms the basis upon 
which the narrative works with more or less freedom. So far as 
we are able to discover, the oldest of these narrators did not 
generally confine themselves as strictly as we might suppose to 
the reproduction, pure and simple, of the material upon which 
they drew for their stories. They not only add to these stories 
free and poetic ornament, but likewise certain essential features, 
according to each one's peculiar way of viewing a subject. Stories 
founded on primitive history specially abound in free descriptions, 
in cases where tradition only furnishes the main points. Thus, 
for instance, it would be altogether false to regard the story of the 
creation of the first human beings and the Fall as a popular myth, 
it being rather the free and well-considered product of the nar- 
rator, who only retains some features borrowed from mythical 
tradition." 

It would not be rossible to define more accurately the distinc- 



116 The Beginnings of History. 

this dogma of the Fall of the human race, in conse- 
quence of the perverted use which its authors made 
of their free-will, is an eternal truth which nowhere 
else comes out with the same distinctness. It fur- 
nishes the sole solution to the difficult problem which 
continually forces itself before the mind of man, and 
which no religious philosophy has ever succeeded in 
solving, without revelation. 

tion between the fundamental doctrine peculiar to the Israelites, 
in which the Christian recognizes divine inspiration, and the 
imaginative form of the narratives, common to the Israelites and 
to the pagan nations by whom they were surrounded. The modi- 
fication of a very few words in these sentences would make of 
them a strictly orthodox thesis, which doubtless would greatly 
astound the eminent philologist who wrote them. But if he has 
bestowed much study upon the text of the Bible in itself, he 
knows what Christians think of it, much better than he un- 
derstands the definitions of their theologians. He would force 
these to eat their words, and that they would never do. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE KEEUBIM AND THE REVOLVING SWORD. 

After having driven the first human pair from 
the earthly Paradise, as a punishment for their sin, 
" Yah veh Elohim placed to the East of the garden 
of 'Eden the kerubtm and the naming blade of the 
sword which turns, to keep the way of the tree of 
life."0 

What were the kerubtm? Or, to speak more 
exactly — since in this commentary we do not deal at 
all with the theological view of the matter, that side 
of the question reserved to itself by the Church, — ■ 
the idea of what plastic form did this name awaken 
in the Hebrew mind ? 

For a short while there was a ruling tendency 
among scholars, in the case of all the remains of 
primitive tradition, proved past doubt as having a 
parallel existence in the Bible and among the most 
ancient peoples of the Aryan race, especially among 
the Iranians, to establish the claim for priority in 
favor of the Aryans, and to see only imitators in the 
Semites ; there was even an inclination to regard the 
contents of the first chapters of Genesis as merely bor- 
rowed at a late elate by the Hebrews from Iran, about 

i 1 ) Genesis iii. 24. 

117 



VJ 



118 The Beginnings of History. 

the time of the Captivity, or under the first kings. of 
the Achaemenida?. The deciphering of the cuneiform 
texts has utterly changed all this from the scientific 
point of view, and shattered the Aryan theory from 
pinnacle to foundation stone ; so that now it reckons 
but a little handful of adherents, and they behind the 
times. No one denies, nowadays, on the one hand, 
that the Chaldaic tradition has a closer affinity with 
the Bible narrative than any other ; or, on the other 
hand, that in all cases where this tradition and that 
of the Aryo-Hindus, or the Iranians, rest upon com- 
mon ground, the claim to priority is vastly on the 
side of Chaldea and Babylon. The Semitico-Baby- 
lonian culture, not to speak of the anterior and non- 
Semitic culture, Accadian or Sumerian^ 1 ) had already 
reckoned long 1 centuries of existence and of brilliant 
development at the epoch when the Aryans were in 
the very dawn of highly civilized life — at their first 
appearance, in fact, upon the stage of history. It 
was through this culture, by means of its widespread 
illumination, that they were profoundly influenced, 
perhaps even before they began their migrations 
from their earliest dwelling-place. And this influ- 
ence was more intensely felt by the Iranians than by 
others, for the reason that their history kept them in 
more immediate and constant contact with the great 
focus of civilization on the banks of the Euphrates 
and the Tigris. Only one question still remains 
obscure, which is, the determination of the precise 
relation of the Biblical tradition to the Chaldaic tra- 

(!) Or, to speak still more exactly, Sumero-Accadian. 



The Kerubim and Revolving Sword. 119 

dition, so as to know precisely whether it be its 
daughter or sister. 

The school holding the Aryan theory fancied it 
had found in the name kerubim one of the strongest 
proofs of its system. This is no Semitic word, 
they said ; it is an Aryan term, and identical with 
the name of the y t ou7rs<;, or griffins, which the Greek 
legend made the warders of the gold in Upper 
Asia.Q 

All this has vanished like a mist since the name 
of the kerubim has been found in the cuneiform 
inscriptions; and more than one philologist to-day 
thinks that instead of being compelled to refer the 
Hebrew word herub to the Aryan root grabh, " to 
seize," the introduction of the vowel u in the Greek 
ypb(p is an indication of the influence of the Semitic 
upon the Hellenic term. ( 2 ) 

Whatever may be said in favor of the last-named 
suggestion, it is at least absolutely certain at this 
moment that the word kerub is of pure Semitic 
origin, and has been used as a substantive to signify 
" bull," in the sense of a creature " strong and pow- 

(i) Eichhorn, Einleitung in das Alte Testament, 4th ed., vol. III., 
p. 80; Vatke, Biblische Theologie, vol. L, p. 325 et seq. ; Tuch, 
Kommentar uber die Genesis, p. 96 et seq. [2d Ed., by Arnold & 
Merx, 1871, p. 76. Tr.] ; Genesius, Thesaurus, p. 711 ; Renan, 
Histoire des Ungues Semitiques, 1st Eel., p. 460 [4th Ed., p. 487. 
Tr.] ; Spiegel, Eranische AUerthumskunde, vol. 1, p. 467. 

Ewald rejected this opinion and thought the kerubim rather 
resembled the Egyptian sphinxes: Die Alterthumer des Volkes 
Israel, 2d Ed., p. 139. [3d Ed., p. 165 ; Eng. Trans., p. 123. Tr.] 

( 2 ) Friedrich Delitzsch, Studien uber Indogermanisch-Semitische 
Wurzelverwandschaft, p. 106 et seq. ; Assyrische Studien, p. 108. 



VJ 



120 The Beginnings of History. 

erful" beyond others — from a root Jcdrab.( l ) This 
can be clearly proved by comparing two parallel 
passages from the prophet Yehezqel, i. 10 and x. 14, 
where kerub is used interchangeably with shor, " bull," 
and where a face of a cherub" and "face of a bull" 
are two synonymous expressions. And, besides, since 
we have come to know those colossal images of 
winged bulls with human faces, crowned with the 
lofty cidaris, decorated with several pairs of horns, 
which flanked the gateways of the Assyrian palaces,( 2 ) 
a number of scholars, among those who have the 
most intimate acquaintance with antique sculpture, 
have been zealous in associating them with the 
kerublm of the Bible. ( 3 ) 

In the explanatory inscription which accompanies 
the bas-reliefs representing the transportation of the 
winged bulls, destined for the gates of the palace of 
Shin-ah6-irba (Sennacherib), at Nineveh, ( 4 ) these 
figures are designated by the same ideographic 
group ( 5 ) which always serves to indicate them in 
the historic inscriptions of the kings of Assyria. 
Now, the Cuneiform Syllabary, A, No. 175, gives 

(i) Franz Delitzsch, Genesis, 4th Eel., p. 541. 
('4 Botta, Monument de Ninive, vol. I., pi. 44 and 45; Layard, 
Monuments of Nineveh, pi. 4 ; new series, pi. 3. 

( 3 ) Layard, Nineveh and its Remains, vol. II., p. 464 [Putnam's 
Amer. Ed., 1849, vol. II., p. 351. Te.] ; Ravenshaw, Journal of 
the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. XVI., p. 93 et seq. ; Roediger in the 
Addenda to Gesenius' Thesaurus, p. 95 ; and especially de Saulcy, 
Histoire de V Art Juda'ique, pp. 22-29. 

( 4 ) Layard, Monuments of Nineveh, new series, pi. 15 and 16. 

( 5 ) Oppert, Expedition en Mesopotamie, vol. II., p. 93; Layard, 
Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, p. 117. [Harpers' 
Amer. Ed., 1871, p. 99. Te.] 



The Kerubim and Revolving Sword. 121 

as readings of this group the Accadian alad^ 1 ) and 
the Assyrian-Semitic shddu, " genius ;"( 2 ) indeed, in 
the documents of Magie the same group is continu- 
ally employed to represent the name of the sMdi, or 
"genii," whether favorable or hostile, of the good 
as well as of the evil principle.( 3 ) This explains 
the circumstance of the winged bull with a human 
head, figuring in a bas-relief of the palace of Khor- 
sabad,( 4 ) as a favorable and protecting genius, which 
watches over the safe navigation of the transports 
that carry the wood of Lebanon by sea. 

The bulls whose images are placed at the gateways 
of the palaces and temples^ and who are never other- 
wise designated in the historic texts than by the ideo- 
graphic group already mentioned,( 5 ) are the guardian 

( 2 ) And not alap, as was formerly supposed to be the reading, 
which resembled the Assyrian alapu, Hebrew eleph, " ox." 

( 2 ) This word is the same as the Hebrew shedim, " demons," 
and the Syriac shido, "demon." The genii of paganism were 
transformed into demons by the Hebrews and Christians. 

( 3 ) Fr. Lenormant, Die Magie und Wahrsagekumt der Chald'der, 
p. 23. 

( 4 ) Botta, Monument de Ninive, vol. I., pi. 32. 

( 6 ) There is an inexact notion still current in some recent 
works, that a mention of the colossal winged bulls has been made 
out in a passage of the Khorsabad inscription, called "the Archives 
of Sargon," where I also fancied (Essai de commentaire des frag- 
ments de Berose, p. 137) that the names of the two classes of 
winged genii represented in the bas-reliefs, the Natgi and the 
Usturi, might be found. This is all a mistake, and should be 
henceforth pitilessly exposed by science. The passage in ques- 
tion (1. 168-173) still contains some difficult words, but the gen- 
eral meaning of it is clear and undoubted. It is an enumeration 
of the victims and the offerings presented by the king in sacrifice 
to the gods [maharkun aqqi): "I have sacrificed in their pre- 
sence," and not an enumeration of sculptured figures. It begins 



122 The Beginnings of History. 

genii who watch over the dwelling. They are looked 
upon as living beings. As the result of a veritable 
magical operation, the supernatural creature which 
they represent is supposed to reside within these 
bodies of stone. This explains the saying of King 
Asshur-ah-idin, at the end of the inscription on the 
terra cotta prism deposited in the foundations of his 
palace at Nineveh : (*) " In this palace, may the 
propitious genius, the propitious colossus, guardian 
of the footsteps of my royalty, who rejoices my 
majesty, perpetuate his presence always, and its 
arms (the arms of the king's majesty) will never 
lose their strength." ( 2 ) And a little before that, in 
speaking of the workmanship of the palace :( 3 ) 
"The gates of fir with solid panels, I have bound 
them with bands of silver and of brass, and I have 
furnished the gateways with genii, with stone colossi, 
which, like the beings they represent, overwhelm 
(with fear) the breast of the wicked, protecting the 
footsteps, conducting to their accomplishment the 

with these words, the very ones which it was supposed contained 
the mention of the winged bulls with the human faces, and of the 
genii : " Some great oxen, fattened, of the same size, young, some 
mountain eagles, some young falcons, some ushumme, some isi'h 
(names of animals of a yet undetermined species), some birds and 
some fishes, the abundance of the ponds," alpi mahhi bitruti su'e 
maruti MAT. TIK. MES, bugi gihruti usumme ishit nuni u igguri 
higal apsi. 

(!) Col. 6, 1. 52-57 (Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. I., 
P l. 47). 

( 2 ) Tna kirib ekalU Satu sedu dumqi lamassi dumqi nagir kibsi 
harrutiya muhadu kabadtiya daris listabru ai ipparku idasa. — Comp. 
the parallel passage of the Khorsabad inscription, 1. 189. 

( 3 ) Col. 5, 1. 38-47. 



The Kerubim and Revolving Bivord. 123 

steps of the king who made them ; to right and to left 
I have caused their bolts to be made." ( l ) The " two 
bulls of the gate of the temple E-shakil," the famous 
pyramid of Babylon, are registered in the divine 
lists, ( 2 ) among the secondary personages composing 
the court of Marduk, the god of this temple, with 
its " two doorkeepers," ( 3 ) and the " four dogs of the 
god." ( 4 ) The same lists give the names of the " two 
bulls of the gate of Ea,"C) as well as those of " his 
eight doorkeepers ;" ( 6 ) and also the names of the 
" two bulls of the gate of the goddess Damkina," his 
consort,( 7 ) and "of the six bulls" of the three gates 
" of the Sun."( 8 ) In a bilingual document, Accadian 
with an Assyrian version, of a rather singular na- 
ture, and unfortunately fragmentary/ 9 ) which appears 
to have formed part of the funeral liturgy, ( 10 ) we 
read invocations to the two bulls who flanked the 
gate of the infernal abode, which were no longer 
simulacra of stone, but living beings, like the bulls at 

(!) Dalai, ic survan sa erisina tabuti mesir kaspi u siparri urakkis 
va uratta babdti sa sedi u lamassi sa abni la ki pi siknisunu irti lim- 
niyutarru naciru kibsi musallimu tallakti larri banilunu imna u 
sumela usaqbita sigarhna. 

( 2 ) Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. II., pi. 56, 1. 18 and 19, 
c-d. 

(3) Ibid., 1. 20 and 21, c-d. 
(*) Ibid., 1. 22-25, c-d. * 

( 5 ) Ibid., 1. 59 and 60, c-a. 

( 6 ) Ibid., 1. 63-70, c-d. 
C) Ibid., 1. 61, 62, c-d. 

( 8 ) Id., ibid., pi. 58, 1. 17-20, a-b. — See F. Lenormant, Etudes 
cuneif ormes, II., p. 20 et seq. 

( 9 ) Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 23, 1. 

( 10 ) See Fr. Lenormant, Die Magie und Wahrsagekunst der Chal- 
d'der, p. 178 et seq. 



\J 



124 The Beginnings of History. 

the gates of the celestial palaces of the gods. The fol- 
lowing is what is said " in the ears of the bull which 
stands to the right of the bronze enclosure : " 

" Great Bull, most great Bull, stamping before the holy gates, 
he opens the interior ; director of Abundance, who supports the 
god Nirba^ 1 ) he who gives their glory to the cultivated fields,( 2 ) 
my pure hands sacrifice toward thee."( 3 ) 

So it seems that this bull plays the part of a kind 
of Atlas, carrying the earth with its harvests upon 
his shoulders. Herewith follows the address "in the 
ears of the Bull to the left of the bronze enclosure : " 

''Thou art the Bull begotten by the god Zu,(*) and at 

(!) The god of the harvest. 

( 2 j This evidently means, "he who improves or cultivates the 
field." It is the same metaphor which in Hebrew expresses the 
idea of breaking up or improving the ground, by nir, a secondary 
root derived from the causative hiphil, voice of nur, "to shine" 
(comp. Ewald, Hebr. Grammat., § 285). 

( 3 ) Alpu galluv alpu mahhu kabis dalte eUitiv — ipta? kirbiti mukil 
higalli — era Nirba musullilu akar qatcii elliti iqqa mdhirka. [Col. 
1, 1. 10-16. Tr.] 

I limit myself to the citation of the Assyrian version, the mean- 
ing of which can be verified by all Semitic scholars. 

(4) This is undoubtedly an allusion to the god called in Acca- 
dian, Lugalturda, and in Assyrian -Semitic, Sharru-ikdu, a god 
whose metamorphosis into "the bird of the tempest" is described 
in the curious bilingual fragment published in Cuneif. Inscr. of 

West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 14, 1. This bird, in Accadian (AN) 
imi-dugud-khu, " the bird of the tempest," in Assyrian zu, "the 
agitator," is a fabulous animal, a gigantic and legendary bird, 
like the roth of the Arabian tales. A myth, the fragments of 
which have come down to us (Or. Smith, Chaldean Account of 
Genesis, pp. 115-119 [Rev. Ed., pp. 117-121. Tr.]), relates how, 
the bird Zu having stolen one of the chief talismans of the power 
of the gods, Anu and Bel ordered Bamman and Nabu to kill him, 



The Kerubim and Revolving Sword. 125 

the entrance of the tomb (*) (is) thy act of 

carrying. 

For eternity, the Lady of the magic ring( 2 ) has rendered thee 
immortal. 

Now] the great . . . ( 3 ) the confines, the limits, 
. . . ( 3 ) fixing the portals of heaven and of earth, 
. . . ( 3 ) that he may guard the gate ! " (*) 

Such are the readings furnished us from the cunei- 
form inscriptions upon the nature and significance of 
the genii, in the form of winged bulls with human 
countenance, whose images were stationed as guard- 
ians at the portals of the edifices of Babylonia and 
Assyria. But these supernatural beings were not 
only called shedi, " genii/' by reason of their nature, 
and " bulls," from their form.( 5 ) It is also certain 

and how these two advised that he should be merely driven from 
the presence of the gods, and how finally Marduk was charged 
with the work of destruction in their stead — all of which is 
inscribed upon several cylinders (Lajard, Culte de Mithra, pi. lxi., 
No. 7). 

( x ) Here occurs a word the meaning of which is still obscure, 
expressed ideographically. 

( 2 ) The surname of Allat, Queen of Hell. 

( 3 ) Gaps caused by fractures in the clay tablet. 

( 4 ) Alpu ilidti Zi atta va — ana parci kibiri DI. E nasuka — ana 
daris AN. NIN. ZI. DA ibrika — . . . rabuti ucurati ucuri — 

. . . mu\sim parci Same u ircitiv — . . . parica lippaqid. 
[Col. 1, 1. 19-24. Tr.] 

( 5 ) As may have been seen by the preceding examples, this 
last appellation has never yet been met with, except in texts of 
a religious and literary character ; it is unknown to historic 
inscriptions. 

But the symbolic creatures of which we are speaking are some- 
times designated therein by the terms arhu, one of the synonyms 
of the conception " ox," the meaning of which has been deter- 
mined by Fritz Hommel (Die Namen der Sseugethiere bei den S'dd- 
semitischen Voelkern, pp. 227 and 432), and rimu, the proper 



126 The Beginnings of History. 

that they were given the name of kirubi.Q) A talis- 
manic monument in the collection of M. Louis de 
Clercq, bearing a magic formula which we find 
repeated upon a great number of analogous objects, 
employs the term kirub (written phonetically H-ru- 
bu) y where shed, or the corresponding ideographic 
group, is used elsewhere.( 2 ) Hence it follows that 
with the Chaldeo- Assyrians, from the teuth to the 
fifth century before our era, the kirub, whose name 
is identical with the Hebrew kerub, was the winged 
bull with a human head. 

There is no reason for doubting that the Israelites, 
during the times of the Kings and the Prophets, 
pictured to themselves the kerubim under this very 
form. Most assuredly, the kerubim, as there de- 
scribed, are animals, hayyoth,^) nay, quadrupeds, 
for a kerub is sometimes used for Yahveh ( 4 ) to ride 

meaning of which is "buffalo." Thus in Layard, Inscriptions, pi. 
41, 1. 84, we hear of arhi cacati, "sculptured bulls;" comp. 
also the prism of Asshur-ah-idin, Col. 5, 1. 17 [Cun. Inscr. West. 
Asia, vol. I., pi. 47. Tr.]. For this use of the word rimu, see 
two plain passages: rimi natruti sikur babani esreti Elamti, "the 
buffaloes that guard the enclosure of the gates of the temples of 
Elam" (G.Smith, History of Assurbanipal, p. 230, 1. '96); rimi 
dalati babi ina zahali namrih ubanniv, "I have caused to be made 
lustrously in beaten bronze the buffaloes and the leaves of the 
gates" [Nabu-kudurri-ucur , Inscription of the East India Com- 
pany, Col. 3, 1. 59-61). [Cun. Inscr. West. Asia, vol. I., pi. 54. Tr.] 
(!) Schrader, Jenseer Liter aturzeitung, 1874, No. 15, p. 218; 
Jahrbucher filr Protestantische Theologie, vol. I., p. 126. 

(2) Kirubu damqu lippaqid, "may the propitious kirub guard ! " 
instead of the ordinary sedu damqu lippaqid, " may the propitious 
genius guard ! " 

( 3 ) Ezekiel i. and x., passim. 

(*) 2 Sam. xxii. 11 ; Psalm xviii. 11. 



The Kerubim and Revolving Sword. 127 

upon, Their feet are "feet without articulation, 
shod like a caif.'^ 1 ) Elsewhere, as we have seen, 
kerub is an equivalent for shdr, " bull." But at the 
same time they are furnished with one or several 
pairs of wings. I should not attempt in this 
place to undertake a complete archeological com- 
mentary upon the famous vision of the Merkabah, 
of which we have a twofold description in chapters I. 
and X. of the prophet Yehezqel, and the study of 
which, from the standpoint of its comparison with 
the remains of Assyrian art, has already furnished 
the subject of a very interesting memoir by M. Holm- 
boe.( 2 ) It will suffice for me to observe that, except- 
ing in one doubtful point, to which we shall presently 
recur — that of the wheels going before the symbolic 
animals, we have the plastic illustration of this vision 
of the prophet in the engraving of an Assyrian cyl- 
inder in the British Museum.( 3 ) 

Upon the waves, designated as usual by undulating 
lines,( 4 ) floats a marvelous and animated bark, ending 
at poop and prow with a human bust, displaying 
half the body. On this bark are seen, in profile, 
two kirubi, or winged bulls, standing back to back, 
who turn their human countenance toward the 
spectator. ( 5 ) These two kirubi necessarily suppose 

(i) Ezek. i. 7. 

(2) Ezechiels syner og Chaldseernes astrolab, Christiania, 1866, 
in 4to. 

( 3 ) Reproduced by the phototypic process in H. G. Tomkins' 
Studies on the Times of Abraham, pi. iii., fig. K. 

(*) It was on the banks of the river Kebar, the Habur of the 
Cuneiform inscriptions, the Chaboras of classic geography, that 
Yehezqel had his first Vision of the Merkabah. 

(5) This is precisely the attitude ascribed in 2 Chron. iii. 13, to 



\J 



128 The Beginnings of History. 

the existence of two others, hidden by them, who 
support the other side of the great shield which they 
carry upon their shoulders. On this* shield is a 
throne, and seated thereon a bearded god, clad in 
a long robe, wearing a high tiara, or cidaris, on his 
head, holding in his hand a short sceptre and a 
large ring, an unadorned circle ; (*) a personage of 
inferior size stands beside the god, as awaiting his 
commands ; this is evidently his angel, his maldk, as 
they called it in Hebrew ; his shukkal, as it was 
expressed in Assyrian j ( 2 ) he it is who is to fill the 
office of mediator, for purposes of communication 
between the god and the adorer who contemplates 
him in an attitude of devotion. 

All this offers a remarkable similarity to the 
description given by Yehezqel of the four hayyoth or 

the two kerubim made of wild olive wood and overlaid with gold, 
who adorned the wall at the end of the debir, in the temple of 
Shelomoh (Solomon), 1 Kings vi. 23-29 ; 2 Chron. iii. 10-13. 

( x ) It is difficult, in the actual condition of our knowledge, to 
give a precise name to this god, beside whom the symbol of the 
disk of the planet Venus, placed within the crescent of the moon, 
is twice repeated, on either side of his head. The inscription on 
the relic throws no light on this point, for the owner of the 
seal announces himself thereupon to be " servant of the planet 
Venus," represented as a goddess, a special form of Ishtar, 
whose figure I recognized beyond question on another cylinder 
(Bulletino delta Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma, 1879, 
pi. vi., No. 3). Perhaps we may here have Shin, the moon god, 
father of Ishtar, sailing in "the bark of the image that rises," 
the celestial bark, of which we hear in the Cuneiform Inscrip. of 
West. Asia, vol. II., pi. 62, 1. 47, e-f 

( 2 ) On the conception of a suhkallu, or angel, for each god, 
among the Chaldeo-Assyrians, see Fr. Lenormant, Etudes sur 
quelques parties dcs Syllabaires Cuneiformes, \ iii. 



The Kerubim and Revolving Sword. 129 

kerubim, two and two, back to back, and going "each 
one straight forward/^ 1 ) toward the four quarters. ( 2 ) 
" Above the heads of the creatures there was the 
appearance of a canopy (r&qia 1 ) of resplendent crystal, 
stretched over their heads above. ( 3 ) 

"And above the canopy that was over their heads, 
there was the appearance of a sapphire stone, in the 
shape of a throne; and on this shape of a throne 
appeared like the figure of a man, placed upon it, 
above. 

"And I saw like enamel (hashmal), like fire, 
within which was this man, and which shone all 
round about; from his loins upward, and from his 
loins downward, I saw as of fire, and as a shining 
light, with which he was surrounded. 

"As the appearance of the bow that is in the 
cloud on a day of rain, such was the appearance of 
this shining light that surrounded him ; it was the 
vision of the image of the glory of Yahveh."( 4 ) 

The vision of the tenth chapter adds another actor, 
corresponding again to one of the personages carved 
upon the Assyrian cylinder ; this is "the man clothed 
in linen, carrying a writer's case by his side," who 
receives the commands of Yahveh, seated upon his 
throne above the kerubim, and executes them as an 
angel or messenger. ( 5 ) 

It is true that Yehezqel adds to the kerubim of 

(i) Ezek. i. 9 and 12. ( 2 ) Id., x. 11. 

(») Ezek. i. 22. 

( 4 ) Ezek. i. 26-28 ; comp. x. 1, 18 and 19. 

(5) Ezek. ix. 2, 3 and 11 ; x. 2 and 6. 

9 



\J 



130 The Beginnings of History. 

his visions, in order to complete their symbolism, 
certain features which we have never yet seen repre- 
sented upon the Assyrian monuments in their figures 
of winged bulls or kirubi ; he makes them more 
complex in appearance. His kerubim have " a form 
of a man's hand under their wings/'( x ) and we are 
unacquainted with any Assyrian bulls furnished 
with arms, though this peculiarity may be observed 
in the figures of winged lions with human heads, 
genii of the same nature as the bulls, and who occa- 
sionally replace them,( 2 ) flanking one of the gates of 
the Palace of Nimroud.( 3 ) The kerubim of the Mer- 
kabah of Yehezqel have not only two, but four, 
wings,( 4 ) two lifted up and two covering their back.( 5 ) 
Instead of a single human face, they have four faces, 
set in pairs, to the right and to the left, one of a 
man, one of a bull, one of a lion, one of an eagle, ( 6 ) 
and these four faces, borrowed from creatures which 
combine all the emblems of strength, united thus in 
the kerubim those forms which Chaldeo-Assyrian 
symbolism borrowed from nature in combining the 
four types of celestial, luminous and protecting 
genii, as we find them upon the monuments. ( 7 ) 

(i) Ezek. i. 8 ; x. 8 and 21: 

( 2 ) Layard, Monuments of Nineveh, pi. 3. ( 3 ) Id., ibid., pi. 42. 

(*) Ezek. i. 6; x. 21. ( 5 ) Id. i. 41. 

(6) Ezek. i. 6 and 10; x. 14 and 21. 

( 7 ) Fr. Lenormant, Essai de Commentaire des fragments de Berose, 
p. 138. — I do not purpose following in this place the history of 
the adoption of these four animal types by Christian symbolism, 
which has made them the emblems of the four evangelists. I will 
limit myself to a reference to the article Evangelistes in the Die- 
tionnaire des Antiquites Ghretiennes, of Abbe Martigny. 



The Kerubim and Revolving Sword. 131 

And, lastly, the Prophet's kerubim are covered with 
eyes, over all their body and over their wings. ( l ) But 
it has always been an easy matter for poets and pro- 
phets to describe complex combinations of forms, 
which artists have found more difficulty in realizing 
by means of the plastic art. Besides which, we are 
yet far from knowing all the religious types created 
by Chaldeo- Assyrian art, arid farther yet from recog- 
nizing all the variations of which these types were sus- 
ceptible. Not a year passes which, in this regard, by 
means of the discovery of new monuments, does not 
yield us unexpected revelations. All that we so far 
possess of specimens of the antique sculpture of Baby- 
lonia and Assyria does not include all the varied and 
bizarre combinations of animal forms described by 
fragment No. 1 of Berossus, as reproduced in paint- 
ing upon the walls of the temple of Bel-Marduk, at 
Babylon, where they were supposed to be monsters 
of the first chaotic creation, making part of the 
train of the goddess Thavatth-Omoroca ( Tiamat-um- 
Uruk), personification of primordial humanity. In 
the same way, specimens of the lyric religious poetry 
of Babylon and Chaldea, so far deciphered, delin- 
eate certain strange types, recalling the unbridled 
fancies of the plastic imagination of the Hindus, 
which do not appear on any known monument, but 
which art doubtless attempted to portray. ( 2 ) For 

(!) Ezek. x. 12. 

( 2 ) Thus, we have never yet come upon the image of the seven- 
headed snake, to which we lately had occasion to refer, p. 109, 
note 2. A bilingual Accadian hymn, with an interlinear Assyrian 
version, describes a god as a he-goat with six heads {Cuneiform 



VJ 



132 The Beginnings of History. 

instance, it seems certain that they must at some time 
have depicted the kerabirn with several faces, since 
Yehezqel describes in the following words those 
which, alternately with the palm-trees, decorated the 
frieze around the interior of the temple at Jerusalem : 
" Each kerub had two faces, a man's face turned one 
way toward the palm-tree, and a lion's face turned 
the other way toward the other palm-tree; and it 
was in this wise all around the house." ( l ) 

I waive the question, still extremely obscure, in 
regard to the kerubim of the Ark of the Cove- 
nant.( 2 ) " The kerubim," — these are the words of 
the directions given by God himself to Mosheh for 
the construction of the ark, — "the kerubim shall 
stretch their wings above it, covering the propi- 
tiatory with their wings, and facing one another, and 
the kerubim shall have their faces turned toward the 
propitiatory (Mercy Seat)." 

This description can in no way apply to the ki- 
rubi of the Assyrian type, in the shape of bulls, 
whose extended wings, according to the direction 
which was always given them, and in which they 
spring from the body, were not capable of covering 
the propitiatory, or lid of the ark, unless they had 
been placed back to back. The passage just cited 
agrees far better with those figures of human shape 

Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 30, 1, rev., 1. 11). Here we 
have another combination to which no analogy is offered by any 
known monument. 

(i) Ezek. xli. 10. 

(2) Exod. xxv. 18-22; 1 Sam. iv. 4 ; 2 Sam. vi. 2 ; 1 Kings 
viii. G and 7 ; 1 Chron. xxviii. 18. 



The Kerubhn and Revolving Sword. 133 

which often confront us upon Egyptian monuments, 
placed face to face on either side of the Naos of the 
gods, and stretching out their arms, furnished with 
great wings, as though to envelop them.Q All else 
about the sacred furnishings of the Tabernacle or 
Ohel-mo'ed is exclusively Egyptian in form, as well 
as the sacerdotal costumes,( 2 ) as was most natural, 
since this was immediately after the Exodus. Not the 
remotest trace of Chaldeo- Assyrian influence may be 
perceived, and the introduction of a symbolic type 
belonging so exclusively to the civilization on the 
banks of the Euphrates and Tigris, as did that of the 
winged bulls with human faces, is so strikingly at 
variance with all the other surroundings as to seem 
highly improbable. 

It would appear, then, that in Exodus the term 
kerub does not describe the same figure as in the 
historic books of the time of the Kings and Pro- 

(!) Description de V Egypte, Antiquites, Planches, vol. I., pi. xi. 
and xii. ; Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of Ancient Egyptians, 
ed. of 1878, vol. III., pp. 357 and 358; Lepsius, Denhmseler aus 
JEgypten und jEthiopien, part III., pi. xiv. 

It should, however, be noticed here that in these representa- 
tions the winged figures embrace the lower part of the Naos, 
while the kerubim of the Ark of Yahveh were placed above its 
lid. Besides which, the Ark, as described in the twenty-fifth 
chapter of Exodus, is not a structure which has more height than 
depth, like the Naos of the Egyptian gods ; it is a chest broader 
than it is high. Yahveh took up his abode thereon, above the 
propitiatory or covering, between the wings of the kerubim (which 
is, however, an Egyptian presentation), that is to say, exteriorly, 
while the gods of Egypt were reputed as hidden in the interior 
of the Naos of the sacred barks, behind hermetically closed doors. 

( 2 ) See, regarding this last point, the book of the lamented 
Abbe Ancessi, L 1 Egypte et Moise, Paris, 1875. 



134 The Beginnings of History. 

phets^ 1 ) It may be, too, that this name, signifying 
" a strong, powerful being," was applied to various 
emblematic images according to the epochs ; and in 
this way the Count de Vogue ( 2 ) has been led to sup- 
pose that the term kerubim should be understood to 
mean all "the symbolic figures, the elements of which 
are borrowed from the animal kingdom, as the sphinx, 
winged bulls with human face, bizarre conceptions, 
infinitely varied in combination by the oriental im- 
agination, according to the taste and beliefs of each 

( 2 ) It should be remembered, furthermore, that the kerubim of 
the Ark were remodeled by Shelomoh after designs furnished 
by his father David (1 Chron. xxviii. 18). At this epoch the 
Egyptian influence was no longer supreme in its sway over the 
Hebrews. The Assyro-Babylonian influence balanced it, and in 
our descriptions of the Temple we recognize a combination of 
elements from both sources. It is very possible that the new 
kerubim, then executed, may have been different from the ancient 
ones as described in Exodus. In fact, there are strong reasons 
for supposing that from that time on they were kirubi after the 
Assyrian type. Indeed, it is stated that they formed a Merkabah 
(1 Chron. xxviii. 18), upon which Yahveh was seated (Psalm xcix. 
1), and which must have been similar to the one seen by Yehezqel. 
Moreover, these new kerubim of the ark, upon which rested the 
glory of Yahveh, suggested the idea of the poetic image, which 
pictures him as mounted upon a kerub-bull (2 Sam. xxii. 11 ; 
Psalm xviii. 11). It does not then seem improbable that, after 
the ark had been surmounted by veritable kerubim, the de- 
scription was applied to the quite different figures which for- 
merly occupied the same place, and described in the twenty-fifth 
chapter of Exodus by a proleptic catachresis. In treating so 
obscure a subject, one can but deal in hypotheses, and several 
equally admissible present themselves in this connection. It is 
wiser to indicate them all than to try and make a systematic 
choice of any one, which it will be impossible to demonstrate. 

( 2 ) Le Temple de Jerusalem, p. 33. 



The Kerubim and Revolving Sword. 135 

nation, but alike in this, that they are all the emblem 
of divine attributes." 

In this connection we may, perhaps, find some light 
thrown upon the subject by the Assyrian vocabulary, 
which has already furnished us with the positive sense 
of the word kirub. In this idiom, a word nearly re- 
lated to Jcirubu, derived from the same root, and 
differing from it only by a slight shade of vocaliza- 
tion, Jcurubu, is the name of a large species of bird 
of prey, — an eagle or vulture^ 1 ) In the Egyptian 
monuments the gods are often represented between 
the forward-stretching wings of sparrow-hawks or 
vultures, placed face to face, and birds of this kind 
often enfold with their wings the divine Naos. The 
directions given by God in Exodus for the furnishing 
and adorning of the Tabernacle are of a stamp that 
rigorously exclude every figure susceptible of an 
idolatrous character, which is far from being the case 
to the same extent in what we know of the temple 
of Shelomoh. In the matter of plastic images, none 
are admitted save only the kerubim, which are not 
only placed upon the ark, but whose representations 
are woven into the hangings of the Mlshkdn,( 2 ) and 
the veil which separates the Holy Place from the 
Holy of Holies.( 3 ) 

From the standpoint of these commands, simple 
animal figures presented fewer suggestions of danger 
than images which, in the paganism of the neighbor- 
ing nations, represented genii, or divinities to whom 

(i) Friedrich Delitzsch, Assyrische Studien, p. 107. 

(2) Exod. xxvi. 1. 

(3) Exod. xxvi. 31. 



VJ 



136 The Beginnings of History. 

worship was rendered. It may, therefore, be conjec- 
tured that the first kerubim of the ark, those described 
in Exodus, were kurubi rather than kirubi; or, in 
other words, great birds, eagles or vultures, with 
forward-extended wings, shadowing the covering or 
propitiatory. In a graphic restoration of the Ark of 
the Covenant in the Tabernacle, it would be at this 
last point that I should be most likely to pause. 

In any case, the kerubim set to guard the entrance 
to Gan-'Eden are undoubtedly the human-faced bulls 
peculiar to the architecture of the banks of the Eu- 
phrates and Tigris, and this is one of the points where 
the Chaldeo-Babylonian coloring of the story is most 
marked. They watch at the gate of the garden of 
Paradise, after the manner of those whose images 
were stationed at the gates of palaces, temples, and 
cities. Their office is absolutely identical, and, as 
Knobel ( x ) has justly remarked, the use of the article 
before the word kerubim denotes an image which 
one was in the habit of seeing continually, and to 
which the mind was perfectly accustomed. This 
indicates, as the birthplace and cradle of the story, a 
civilization which represented genii or angels, under 
the form of kirubi, as charged with the duty of pro- 
hibiting the entrance to a certain exclusive locality. 

With the kerubim, Yahveh stationed at the gate 
of the Gan-'Eden, " to keep the way of the tree of 
Life/ 7 the lahat hahereb hammithhappekeih. This 
is again one of the most obscure of expressions, and 

(!) Die Genesis, 2d Ed., p. 51. [3d Ed., by Dillrnann, p. 95. 
Tr.] 



The Kerubim and Revolving Sword. 137 

it is necessary to weigh each word carefully, in order 
to determine its meaning. 

There is no question here of a weapon placed in 
the hands of each of the kerubim. This is an object 
apart, independent, singular, while the kerubim are 
plural ; in other words, there are two of them, one 
on each side of the gate ; nor do the angels, under 
the form of winged bulls, hold it in their hands ; the 
lahat holier eb is not put in motion — turned about — 
by external action ; endowed with proper motion, it 
turns upon itself; this fact is clearly indicated by 
the use of the participle of the reflective voice hith- 
pa'el.^) I have translated " the flaming blade of the 
sword which turns," in order not to lose sight of the 
meaning admitted in this connection for the word 
lahat by every version since the Septuagint. But 
this traditional meaning, though philologically most 
acceptable, is not certain. It stands alone, thus taken, 
while the word lahat reappears in another passage of 
the Pentateuch, ( 2 ) this time with the certain mean- 
ing of " spell, enchantment, magical prodigy," lehdtim 
there being the synonym of ldtim.( d ) Hence we 
might translate: "The revolving phenomenon of 
the curved sword." In fact, hereb means properly, 
scimetar, ( 4 ) or sword, curved sickle-like, called in 
Egyptian khopesh, in Assyrian sapar and namzar. 

(*) Following the tonic accent, hammithhappeketh refers to 
lahat, and not to hereb. 

( 2 ) Exod. vii. 11. 

(3) Comp. Exod. vii. 22; viii. 3 and 14. [A. V., chap. viii. 7 
and 18. Tr.] 

( 4 ) See Bochart, Ilierozoicon, lib. v., chap, xv., vol. II., p. 760, 
ed. London, 1063. 



VJ 



138 The Beginnings of History. 

In any case, whether we understand its name as 
signifying " flame/' consequently " flaming blade," or 
else "spell, magical prodigy/' the lahat hahereb ham- 
mithhappeketh stands in a relation to the kerubim at 
the gate of Gan-'Eden, which curiously suggests that 
existing between the kerubim and the wheels in 
the double vision of the Merkabah of the prophet 
Yehezqel. 

" I looked, and behold, there were four wheels 
beside the kertibim, one wheel beside each kerub, 
and the color of the wheels was as the appearance of 
a tarshish stone. ( x ) 

"And in their appearance all four had the same 
form, as it were a wheel in the midst of another 
wheel. In going they went on their four sides, and 
they turned not in their going, but they went straight 
forward, without turning in their going. 

" When the kertibim went, the wheels went close 
to them, and when the kerubim unfurled their wings 
to rise from the earth, the wheels turned not from 
beside them. 

" When they stopped, the wheels stopped ; and 
when the ones rose up, the others rose with them, 
for the spirit of the creatures was in them."( 2 ) 

The wheels in question were " on the ground," ( 3 ) 
" under the kerubim ; " ( 4 ) consequently laid flat, 

(*) Ordinarily this is translated "chrysolite," or "topaz," and 
this traditional interpretation would seem to be exact. The gem, 
tirisassu, is also known from the cuneiform texts ; for instance, in 
the inscription of Nabu-kudurri-ucur, called that " Of the East 
India Comp.," col. 4, 1. 6. \_Cun. Ins. West. Asia, vol. I., pi. 55. Tr.] 

( 2 ) Ezek. x. 9-17; comp. i. 15-21. 

(3) Ezek. i. 15. (*) Ezek. x. 2 and 6„ 



The Kerubim and Revolving Sword. 139 

serving as pedestals for the symbolic creatures, and 
their rotation took place in a horizontal plane, a fact 
which explains the name galgal, " whirlwind," given 
to theni.Q It explains, furthermore, how their cir- 
cumference, which was turned fully upon the spec- 
tator, could have been full of eyes all around ; ( 2 ) and 
when the prophet says "that they had a circumfer- 
ence and a height that were dreadful,( 3 ) the second 
dimension refers to the breadth of their rims. We 
may thus picture them to ourselves like circular 
drums of immense height, turning rapidly upon 
their vertical axes, 

At the gate of the Gan-'Eden, we do not hear of a 
lahat hahereb beside each kerub, like the wheel of 
YehezqePs vision ; there is but one, while the keru- 
bim are two. It should then be conceived as in the 
midst, with the kerubim to the right and left, not on 
the ground, but suspended at a certain height in the 
air, where it turns upon itself, moving with its own 
proper motion of rotation, like the wheels of the 
prophet. As to this motion of rotation, I make no 
hesitation in concluding that it is only possible to 
think of it as occurring on a horizontal plane, just 
like the wheels, for this is the most likely fashion in 
which, when advancing with the kerubim against the 
irreverent intruder at the forbidden gate, it would 
strike and cut him in pieces as soon as it should 
graze him. 

It is most evident that here, as always, the sym- 
bolic image has been supplied by a material object, 

(i) Ezek. x. 13. (2) Ezek. i. 18. ( 3 ) Ezek. i. 18. 



VJ 



140 The Beginnings of History. 

ready at hand, such as a sharp weapon, designed 
for hurling, which, cast from a distance, would 
make the same kind of wound in striking as a 
sword, by the horizontally rotating motion im- 
parted to it in the act of throwing. This style 
of weapon is well known, being the tchakra of 
the Hindus, a disk with sharp edges, hollow at the 
centre, which is flung horizontally, after having been 
whirled around the fingers, in order to impart to it 
a rapid revolving motion. The similarity has not 
escaped the quick observation of Obry, who, most 
reasonably, according to my view, has identified the 
lahat hahereb hammithhappeketh of Genesis with the 
tchakra of India. ( l ) Only, since the use of the 
sharp-edged disk was then unknown, save among the 
Hindus, he found therein an indication of the Aryan 
origin of the narrative and of its symbolism. 

On this point I differ from this most ingenious 
scholar. The sharp disk which is flung in giving it 
a horizontal motion is not exclusively confined to 
India. Even though we may not yet have discov- 
ered its representation upon the monuments of As- 
syro-Babylonian art, even though its common use at 
the great epoch of the Assyrian empire may be 
granted uncertain for serious reasons, yet this weapon 
was known and used by the inhabitants of Chaldea 
and Babylonia in the most ancient periods of their 
history, and traces of its use may be found in reli- 
gious poetry. 

( x ) In his remarkable dissertation on Le berceau de T esplce hu- 
maine chez les Indiens, les Perses, et les Ilebreux (Amiens, 1858), 
p. 165. 



The Kerubim and Revolving Sword. 141 

We have clear proof of this in a fragment of lyric 
poetry, originally set forth in Accadian, the text of 
which has come down to us, accompanied by an in- 
terlined Assyrian translation, on one of the clay tab- 
lets of the British Museum^ 1 ) It is a song of tri- 
umph, a sort of dithyrambic, of a warrior god to his 
victorious arms ; perhaps it may be Mardnk, when 
about to engage in his cosmogonic struggle against 
the monster Tiamat. He is armed with a complete 
panoply, — grappling-hook (namzctr), lance (ariktu), 
lasso (shibbu), bow {qashtu), club (zizpan), and shield 
(Jcabab) ; furthermore, he holds a disk in each hand. 
This is his most formidable weapon, the one which 
assures to him the victory, one upon which he dwells 
with most satisfaction, describing it with a perfect 
wealth of metaphors. These varied metaphors, 
which seem at first sight contradictory, are re- 
concilable only when allowed to apply to a wea- 
pon for slinging, shaped like a "disk" or like 
the " sun," moving horizontally with a gyratory mo- 
tion, like that of a "waterspout," having a hollow 
centre, that the tips of the fingers can pass through, 
whence seven divergent rays issue toward a circum- 
ference, about which are studded " fifty heads," — 
fifty sharp points. 

(*) Cuneiform Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. II., pi. 19, No. 2. 
Oppert made the first translation of this fragment, and since then 
it has been taken up by several scholars in succession, who each 
made the meaning of the text plainer. The last version, and the 
clearest, as I think, is one which I have given, with a philological 
analysis, in my Etudes Accadiennes , vol. III., p. 27 et seq. I refer 
the reader to this work as a justification of my translation, and 
will therefore refrain from reproducing in a note either the Acca- 
dian or Assyrian transcription of the text. 



\J 



142 The Beginnings of History. 

The reader may judge himself as to further details 
by the quotations which follow : 

" In my right hand I hold my disk of fire ; in my 
left hand I hold my disk of carnage^ 1 ) 

The sun with fifty faces, the high weapon of my 
divinity, I hold it. 

The weapon which devours entirely, like the ogre, 
I hold it. 

That which breaks the mountains, the powerful 
weapon of the god Anu, I hold it. 

That which bends the mountains, the fish with the 
seven fins, I hold it. 

The littu of the battle, which devastates and deso- 
lates the rebellious land, I hold it. 

The whirpool of the battle, the weapon of fifty 
heads, I hold it. 

Like unto the enormous serpent, with seven heads, 
unto a wave which divides itself into seven branches. 

Like unto the serpent which lashes the waves of 
the sea, (attacking) the enemy in front. 

Devastating in the violence of battles, dominatrix 
of heaven and of earth, the weapon of seven heads, 
I hold it. 

The weapon which fills the land with the terror of 
its vast strength. 

(i) This "disk of fire" and this "disk of carnage" are so 
highly esteemed, as having in themselves "a spirit" like the 
wheels of YehezqeTs vision, a life of their own like the lahat 
hahareb of Genesis, that they are finally invoked, as personal 
gods, side by side with Shamash (the Sun) and his spouse Gula 
(Cuneif. Inscr. of West. Asia, vol. III., pi. 66, rev., 1. 31 and 32, b). 



The Kerubim and Revolving Sword. 143 

In my right hand powerfully, the projectile of 
gold and of onyx, I hold it." 

Thus we have in one of the most ancient texts of 
Chaldaic poetry the distinct allusion to a mythological 
weapon, entirely analogous to the tchakra of the In- 
dian heroes, and corresponding, in a very remarkable 
manner, to the idea which is most naturally evoked 
by the very expressions of the Bible texts as to the 
nature of the " revolving sword," placed with the 
kerubim at the gate of the garden of 'Eden^ 1 ) It 
may have been observed that in the fragment just 
cited the weapon is designated — and this completes 
the similarity — by the word littu, which is the regular 
Assyrian correspondent of the Hebrew lahat. The 
Assyrian version thus translates the ideogram used 
in the Accadian text, a peculiar ideogram for which 
the Cuneiform Syllabary, A, No. 134, gives confi- 
dently the reading silam in the pre-Semitic idiom of 
Chaldea. The word — with its consonantal structure 
Iht, vocalized in the Hebrew into lahat, and in the 
Assyrian into lit (for lihit) — was therefore employed 
to designate this kind of weapon in the different 
languages of the Semitic family. Still, the Assyrian 

(*) Mr. Fox Talbot (Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archse- 
ology, vol. V., p. 1 et seq.) believes that he has found, in the first 
fragment of the tablet which relates the struggle between Bel- 
Marduk and Tiamat, in the description of the preparations of 
the god before the battle, something analogous to this "revolving 
sword," and Abbe Vigouroux has followed him (La Bible et les Be 
couvertes Modernes, 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 207). But in reality there 
is nothing like it in this text, of which a more exact translation 
may be found, accompanied by the interlinear transcription of 
the text, in the first appendix at the end of this volume, I. F. 



\J 



144 The Beginnings of History. 

gives us no more decisive information than does the 
Hebrew upon the etymological sense of the word, 
for, so far, we are not acquainted with a second ex- 
ample in the texts of this language. It is true that 
there are two verbal roots lahat, one signifying " to 
flame," the other "to envelop, cover, hide;" it is the 
second which gave lahat " illusion, enchantment," to 
the Hebrew. But we remain in the same uncer- 
tainty as to knowing from which of the two may be 
derived our word lahat=lit, the kind of weapon which 
we have attempted to define, and therefore cannot 
tell whether it be thus named as "flaming" or as 
"enchanted and magic." Let us add, that the notion 
of "enveloping" is always intimately associated with 
that of " surrounding " and of " going around," and 
that, consequently, a name derived from the second 
of the roots we have indicated might agree perfectly 
with the gyratory motion of the object to which the 
name applies. 

However that may be, the " revolving sword " of 
the third chapter of Genesis, as well as the kerubim, 
is found again in the cuneiform documents, the thing 
no less than the word. Here again we are compelled 
to settle down upon Chaldea as the point whence the 
narration started. But it is strange that the use of 
the weapon analogous to the tchakra of India, which 
is designated by the expression lahat hahereb ham- 
mithhappeketh, does not make its appearance at the 
Assyrian epoch, either in the texts or on the monu- 
ments, and neither do we find a trace of it among 
the peoples of Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine in their 
historic age. In Chaldea w T e come upon a notice of 



The Kerubim and Revolving Sword. 145 

it in an inscription dating back to the remotest past 
of this country, just as among the Hebrews it is found 
alone in the traditional narration of the origin of 
humanity, as given in the Jehovist document. This 
affords, it seems to me, an important indication of 
the extremely remote date at which we must place 
this story, not only as to subject, but for the deter- 
mination of at least some of its essential terms. The 
material detail, which we have laid so much stress 
upon, and which has a positive and tangible charac- 
ter, carries us back with much greater show of proba- 
bility to the age of the migration of the Tera'hites 
than to that time when the influence of the civiliza- 
tion of Assyria, backed by force of arms, wielded an 
irresistible power over the kingdoms of Israel and 
Yehudah. 
10 



\J 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE FEATEICIDE AND FOUNDATION OF THE 
FIRST CITY. 

At that epoch when the Semitic idiom, qualified 
by the Assyrian, had come to be exclusively the 
spoken language of Babylon and Nineveh, the twelve 
months of the year were designated by those names, 
subsequently adopted by the Jews and the majority 
of the Semites, which, philologically, are extremely 
difficult of explanation, though in the cuneiform 
texts this nomenclature rarely occurs in phonetic 
characters, being more frequently replaced by an 
ideographic sign appropriate to each month. The 
meaning of these ideographic signs has no connection 
with the meaning which has been found to lurk 
under the corresponding Semitic name. Hence they 
constitute a second symbolic and religious nomencla- 
ture, perfectly distinct, and a valuable tablet in the 
British Museum (*) discloses to us the fact that this 

( x ) See Norris, Assyrian Dictionary, vol. I., p. 50 ; Fr. Lenor- 
mant, Les premieres civilisations, vol. II., p. 71 et seq. ; Sayce, iu 
the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archseology, vol. III., pp. 
161-164 ; Friedrich Delitzsch, Assyrische Lesestucke, 2d Ed., p. 70, 
No. 3. In the fourth appendix at the end of this volume, table 1, 
we give the list of months of the Chaldeo-Babylonian year, with 
all their different designations. 

146 



The Fratricide. 147 

designation of each month by a simple ideogram, is 
merely an abbreviation of an ancient nomenclature, 
dating back to the ante-Semitic civilization of Chal- 
dea, when the full appellations of the months all 
referred to myths. We are acquainted with some 
of these myths, through the fragments of epic nar- 
rations which George Smith has brought to light, 
and there is no doubt that the greater part of them 
belong to the cycle of cosmogonic traditions, besides 
being related to the sign corresponding with the 
month in the Zodiac. Thus the name of the eleventh 
month in the year is " Month of the curse of rain," 
its myth being the deluge, and its zodiacal sign 
Aquarius. 

The third month of the year is, in the mythical 
nomenclature, " the month of brick-making," and in 
fact a ritual command among the Babylonians and 
Assyrians ordained for this month the liturgic cere- 
mony for the moulding of bricks for sacred buildings 
and royal edifices.^) Religion in this case conse- 

(!) See chiefly the indications of the inscription called " of the 
Barrel-Cylinder of Sargon" {Cuneif. Inscr. of West. Asia, vol. L, 
pi. 36, 1. 47-51 ; Oppert, Les inscriptions de Dour-Sarkayan, p. 18, 
1. 57-61). We modify the details of Oppert' s translation in some 
particulars, in accordance with the progress made in Assyrian 
philology since 1870. 

" In the month of the first summer, the month of the royal 
twin, of the god Great Stag (surname common to Ea and to Shin), 
of the god who exercises dominion over the heavens, who covers 
my side with his protection, of the god illuminator of heaven and 
earth, of the hero among the gods, Shin, (the month) which, by 
the decrees of Anu, Bel and Ea, the god with the bright eye, 
that bricks be made in it, in order to build a city, or a house, 
has been called ' the month of the brick,' in the day of the invoca- 



148 The Beginnings of History. 

crated a usage resulting from the physical climatic 
conditions. In Chaldea and Babylonia the majority 
of the edifices were built of bricks simply dried in 
the sun. The third month of the year (Si van, May- 
June) coincides with the period when the waters of 
the Euphrates and Tigris, which have been rising 
during March and April, begin to fall ; the condition 
of the soil left by the retreating waters makes it easy 
to mould the bricks at that particular time, and then 
to have them dry in the sun, already burning in its 
heat, though not yet fierce enough to crack the raw 
brick, which would inevitably happen if they were 
dried in July or August. Seeing as we do, in the 
royal inscriptions, the importance attached to the 
ceremony of brick-making from the religious stand- 

tion to the son of the Lord of the vast understanding (Marduk), 
to Nabu, scribe of the universe, mover of all things of the gods 
(the days of invocation to Nabu are the 4th, 8th and 17th of the 
month), I have caused his bricks to be moulded (those for the 
new city being built by the king) ; to Laban, lord of the brick 
foundations, and to Nergal, son of Bel, I have immolated sheep as 
victims ; I have caused flutes to be played, and I have raised my 
hands in invocation. In the month of Ab, the month of the 
descent of the god Fire, dissipating the damp mists (?), fixing the 
corner-stone of the city and of the house, I have laid its founda- 
tions, I have settled its bricks." 

Ina arah cip (the sign ur has been substituted for the sign ip in 
the last character, by a mistake of the scribe) arah kali sarri Hi 
turahi rabi Hi taric uzza \sam~\e (the scribe has omitted the 
ideogram AN) musaglim caddi Hi nannar same ircitiv qarrad Hani 
Sin sa ina hmat Aniv Belt u Ea Hi bel ini elli ana laban libitti ebis 
ala ubita arah libitti nabu zikrusu ina yum qabi sa abal bel sikli 
palki Nabu tupsar gimri mumdir kullat Hani uhalbina libnassu. ana 
Laban bel usse libitte u Neurugal ablu sa Bel kirri niqi aqqi sirqu 
asruq attasi nis qatateya. ina arah abu arah arad I si musbil ambate 
ratupte mukin temen ali u biti ussesu addi va ukin libnassu. 



The Fratricide, 149 

point, and being able to prove decisively its associa- 
tion with the symbolical name of the month, (*) it 
would be difficult not to believe that it is con- 
nected with the myth as well, and that this myth 
is related to the foundation of a city, doubtless the 
first city. Now the sign of the third month in the 
Zodiac was, with the Chaldeans, as with ourselves 
still, the sign of Gemini ; and we find the name 
" month of the twins " sometimes substituted for that 
of " month of brick-making," as the designation of 
sivan.( 2 ) How natural, in this connection, to call to 
mind the Bible story which associates the building of 
the first city with the first murder, perpetrated by 
one brother upon another ! This tradition, which 
associates the formation of a city with a fratricide, is 
in fact one of the ideas common to most nations, of 
strictly primitive origin, anterior to the dispersion of 
the great civilized races, and may be traced almost 
everywhere. It would be a curious study to follow 
it through all its variations, beginning with Qain, 
who built the first city, Hanok, after slaying Habel, 
and ending with Eomulus, who laid the foundations 
of Rome in the blood of his brother Eemus.( 3 ) 

( ! ) Also with its popular name, for sivan is manifestly derived 
from the same root as the Hebrew sin, Aramaic seyan, " dirt, 
clay." 

( 2 ) Sayce, in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archse- 
ology, vol. III., p. 162. 

( 3 ) Of course we could not follow out all the details which this 
study would demand. We will limit ourselves to suggesting them 
to the scholars whose researches and thoughts are taken up with 
primitive traditions, and who hold that the scrutiny of the docu- 
ments and customs of historic epochs go farther toward fixing the 
origin of the great civilized nations of the Ancient World, than 



150 The Beginnings of History. 

We will only recall the history of Agamenes and 
Trophonios, the two mythical builders of the Temple 
of t Apollo at Delphi and of the Treasury of Orcho- 
menes. Agamenes is himself caught in a trap in the 
Treasury which he helped to build, while attempting 
to rob it, and his brother Trophonios, in order to save 
. him from a thief 's punishment, kills him and carries 
I away his head.^) The fable is not of Greek inven- 
tion ; it arose originally in the East, for we find it 
again, in every detail, in the first part of the popu- 
lar legend which Herodotus gleaned in Egypt in 
regard to King Rhampsinitus.Q The circumstance 

making use of the method of analogies drawn from the savages of 
our own day. The most common idea suggested by this mode of. 
study is that the beginnings of a city must be associated with a 
human sacrifice, that its foundations may be watered with pure 
blood. It would be easy to trace this idea through the popular 
traditions of every nation. We will note simply, because this 
does not take us outside the confines of the Semitic or Syro- 
Euphratic worlds, the curious legends which the anonymous 
author of the Chronicon paschale (I., pp. 72 and 78, Bonn Ed.) has 
preserved for us in regard to the foundation of Tarsus in Cilicia 
and Gortyna in Crete, two cities of Phoenician origin. The heroic 
founder of each of these cities immolates upon its site a young 
virgin, whom this very immolation deifies, so that she becomes 
the Fortune of the city. On the same principle, Romulus and 
, Remus are the two Lares Indigetes of the primitive Rome of the 
^ Palatine (Preller, Roemische Mythologie, p. 695), Remus, originally 
Romus, the murdered brother, from this stand-point taking pre- 
cedence of his brother and murderer. In all this we have an 
evident echo of the ancient tradition which connected the founda- 
tion of the first city with a murder, that foundation becoming 
the type of all that followed. 

(*) Pausan, IX. 37, 3; Charax ap Schol. ad Aristophan. Nub., 
V. 508. 

( 2 ) Herod., II. 121. 



The Fratricide. "151 

of the beheading by the murderer-brother, which 
appears in both narratives, is important, and will 
furnish us with a guiding thread which we need but 
follow in order to get back at last to our starting 
point. 

The Roman traditions relate that when Tarquin 
caused the foundations of Jupiter Capitolinus to be 
dug, a human head was found in the trench, which, 
by a prodigy, was still fresh and bleeding, and in 
this the Etruscan haruspices saw an omen of the 
future grandeur of the sanctuary and the town.( x ) 
This head, it was added, was that of Olus or Tolus, 
assassinated by the slaves of his brother,( 2 ) a repeti- 
tion of the story of Romulus and Remus, with its loca- 
tion on the Capitoline instead of the Palatine hill.( 3 ) 
I will not dwell upon its similarity with the story 
of the heads of the Danai'des' husbands, buried by 
Danaos, after their murder, under the foundations of 
the walls of the citadel at Argos,( 4 ) nor the rather 
extensive cycle of fables which this legend opens to 
us.( 5 ) But it is impossible not to note that the Capi- 

i 1 ) Dionys. Halicarn.,IV. 59 et seq. ; Tit. Liv., I. 55; Serv. ad 
Virgil, JEneid, VIII., v. 345 ; Aurel. Vict., Be vir illustr., VIII. 4 ; 
Isidon, Origin., XV., 2. 

( 2 ) Arnob., Adv. gent., VI. 7. 

( 3 ) It is told, further, that the Etruscan augur, consulted by 
Tarquin upon the signification of the discovery just made, wished 
to turn the presage to his own profit, but his son, Argus, betrayed 
the secret to the king's deputies. The furious augur pursued his 
son as far as Rome, where he sought refuge, and slew him in the 
place called Argiletum (Serv. ad Virgil, ^Jneid, VIII., v. 345). 
Another variation of the story of the murder. 

(±) Pausan., II., 24, 3. 

( 5 ) See Ch. Lenormant, Nouvelle galerie Mythologique, p. 43, 



VJ 



152 The Beginnings of History. 

toline was first of all the Mount of Saturn^ 1 ) and 
that the Roman archaeologists established a complete 
affinity between the Capitoline and Mount Cronios in 
Olympia, from the standpoint of their traditions and 
religious origin. ( 2 ) This Mount Cronios is, as it were, 
the Omphalos of the sacred city of Elis, the primitive 
centre of its worship. It was at the foot of Cronios 
that the Olympic games were celebrated, and with 
the Greeks the institution of the games is always 
connected with a funereal origin ; in point of fact, 
they take place near a tomb.( 3 ) And, in truth, the 
Olympian Cronios, like the Capitol, with its head of 
Olus or Tolus,( 4 ) is a tomb as well as a mountain. ( 5 ) 

(i) Dionys. Halicarn., I., 34 ; II., 1 ; Varr., Be ling. Lett., V., 42: 

( 2 ) Dionys. Halicarn., I., 34. The historian connects this with 
the tradition of the colony of Epteans, coming from Elis and set- 
tling on the Capitoline. 

(3) Ch. Lenormant, Nouv. gal. Mythol., p. 27. 

( 4 ) Ch. Lenormant, Nouv. gal. Mythol., p. 41. — The Capitol was 
also the tomb of the Virgin Tarpeia (Varr., De ling. Lai., V., 42) 
[ed. Miiller, 1833. Tr.], a tomb which was the object of a public 
cult (Dionys. Halicarn., II., 40; comp. Fest,, v. Tarpeise), and 
it has been already remarked (Ch. Lenormant, Nouv. gal. Myth., 
p. 42) that the singular contradictions of the stories relating to the 
death of Tarpeia show her possibly to have been " the victim 
devoted to that fate from the foundation of the citadel, and now 
become its protecting Fortune." 

( 5 ) Again we notice that it was at Olympia that Oinomaos 
beheaded the pretenders to the hand of his daughter Hippodaraia, 
whom he had overcome at the chariot race (Philostrat. Jun., 
Icon., 9), and that he built the city of Harpinoe (Pausan., VI., 
21, 7) over the tomb of these victims of his cruelty, the name of 
this town seeming to be derived from that of the scimetar of 
Cronos ; just as Danaos built the citadel of Argos over the sepul- 
chre in which he deposited the heads of his daughters' husbands. 



The Fratricide. 153 

It sometimes receives the name of Olympus^ 1 ) and it 
is related that it held hidden within its bosom the 
sepulchre of a mysterious personage, whose name was 
kept secret.( 2 ) Some supposed it to be the giant 
Xschenos, who, during a famine, offered himself up 
for the salvation of the people ; and others, the enig- 
matical Taraxippos, whose name, as Pausanias tells 
us, was the disguise of a god, or a hero, in regard 
to whose true nature opinions differed widely.( 3 ) 
There is an evident connection between this mys- 
terious personage, buried under Mount Cronios, and 
the child Sosipolis, honored by a no less myste- 
rious worship in a sanctuary located at the foot of 
the same height ;(*) his legend being of the same 
character as that of Ischenos, in supposing him to 
have been the deliverer of the city. A number of 
indications go to prove that in the oldest form of the 
traditions of Olympia, the god or hero entombed in 
Cronios was called 01ympos,( 5 ) and was the Eponym 
of the city. After the same manner, an Olympos 
was sometimes substituted for Zeus, in his sacred 
sepulchre in Crete ;( 6 ) and still another Olympos 
was supposed to be buried under the Phrygian 
Olympus. ( 7 ) All this brings us to the fable of the 
three Corybantes, the two elder of whom slew their 

.(*) Tzetz. ad Lycophr. Cassandr., v. 42 ; comp. Schol. ad Apol- 
lon. Rhod., Argonaut, I., v. 598; Strab., VIII., p. 356. 

( 2 ) Tzetz. ad Lycophr., Cassandr., v. 42. 

( 3 ) VI., 20, 8 and 9. 

( 4 ) Pausan., VI., 20, 2 and 3 ; 25, 4. 

( 5 ) Ch. Lenormant, JVouv. gal. Mythol., p. 27. 

( 6 ) Ptolem. Hephasst., II., p. 17, ed. Roulez. 
(*) Schol. ad Theocrit. Idyll, XIII., v. 30. 



\J 



154 The Beginnings of History. 

younger brother, cut off his head, and, after crown- 
ing it, buried it beneath Olympus,^) the Phrygian 
mountain, according to Welcker;( 2 ) the Olympian, 
according to Charles Lenormant.( 3 ) The same inci- 
dent was related of the Cabiri,( 4 ) in this particular 
like the Corybantes, except that a variation was 
introduced into the story, to the effect that the 
phallus, not the head, of their brother was what 
they possessed themselves of. The representations 
of the event engraved upon the Etruscan mirrors, 
attest the importance of the fable of the fratricide 
in the Cabiric mysteries, which had developed so 
largely in Etruria in the third century B. C.( 5 ) 

There are no personages in all Greek Mythology 
more obscure and complex than the Cabiri and the 
Corybantes. Their physiognomy and their nature 
are made up of the most diverse elements, and the 
consequence is an amalgamation which results in 

( x ) J. Firmic. Matern., De error, profan. relig., p. 23 ; Clem. 
Alex., Protrept., p. 16, eel. Potter. 

( 2 ) Griechische Goetterlehre, vol. III., p. 179. 

( 3 ) Nouv. gal, Mythol., p. 43. — It should be observed here that 
the Cabiric worship is not unknown at Olympus (Gerhard, Pro- 
drom. Mythol. KunsterMserung, p. 113 ; Hyberborisch roemische Stu- 
dien } vol. I., p. 34 ; Fr. Lenormant, in Dictionnaire des Antiquites of 
Daremberg & Saglio, vol. I., p 769). It serves as groundwork 
in grouping the divinities adored in the Prytaneum of that city 
(Pausan., V., 15, 7), which is the connecting link between the 
religion of Elis and that of the Lybian Greeks. 

( 4 ) Clem. Alex., Protrept., p. 16, ed. Potter. 

( 5 ) Gerhard, TJeber die Metallspiegel der Etrusker, in his Gesam- 
melte aJcademische Abhandlungen, vol. II., pp. 227-314 ; Fr. Le- 
normant, in the Dictionnaire des Antiquites of Daremberg & Saglio, 
vol. I., p. 771. 



The Fratricide. 155 

almost inextricable confusion. The Cabiri are, in 
the first place, the chief deities of one of the principal 
forms of the Pelasgian religion,^) and they always 
appear in this -character in Samothracia; similarly, 
there was in Greece, in early times, a god called 
Corybas, who was one of the most important personi- 
fications of the sun.( 2 ) But in connection with the 
great Cabiric gods, and associated with Corybas, we find 
grouped a whole procession of followers (npoitoloc), 
intermediate between the gods and men, who were 
also termed Cabiri and Cory ban tes, ( 3 ) and who were 
finally confounded with the gods themselves in 
popular mythological stories. Regarded in the light 
of secondary and ministering deities, or daqiovs^, the 
Cabiri and Corybantes offer the closest resemblance 
to the Curetes, the Dactyles and the Telchines ; like 
them, they are at once supernatural beings, repre- 
sentatives of the ancient sacerdotal corporations of 
the primitive ages,( 4 ) and the ancestors and proto- 
types of the human race.( 5 ) All these varied ele- 
ments enter into the myth of the fratricide, mixed 
up in an inextricable fashion ; this myth holding a 

(!) See my article Cabiri, in Daremberg & Saglio's Dictionnaire 
des Antiquites. 

( 2 ) See proofs of this in Maury, Histoire des Religions de la 
Grece antique, vol. I., p. 199. 

( 3 ) Fr. Lenormant, in Daremberg & Saglio's Dictionnaire des 
Antiquites, p. 763. 

(*) Preller, Griechische Mythologie, 2d Ed., vol. I., pp. 514-519 ; 
Maury, Histoire des Religions de la Grece, vol. I., pp. 198-207. 

(5) Gerhard, Griechische Mythologie, \\ 636 and 639. 



156 The Beginnings of History. 

chief place in the conception of them from the mys- 
tical standpoint.^) 

A very ancient syncretism, having its roots in 
Asia, combined there the primitive tradition of the 
first murder, which is a fratricide and connected with 
the founding of the first town, with that account, of 
the very essence of the old religions of the Pelasgic 
race, concerning the child-god, whose nature is favor- 
able to man, the genius, who is saviour and mediator, 
issue of the great mother-goddess, and placed beside 
her, like the child Zeus beside Rhea, Sosipolis beside 
Ilithya, Tychon beside Tyche, Iacchos beside Deme- 
ter, the child Jupiter beside the Fortuna Primigenia 
of Prseneste,( 2 ) the saviour-genius or Agathodaimon, 
whose habitual symbols are the serpent and the 
phallus, the signification of which is in this case ade- 
quate.^) The child-saviour and mediator of the 
Pelasgian cults is frequently represented as carry- 
ing out his work of salvation with the price of his 
death, and a true passion. ( 4 ) This is a root idea in 

(!) The story of Trophonios and Agamedes, just related, 
belongs here, the kinship of these personages to the Cabiri 
having already suggested itself to Maury [Histoire des Religions 
de la Grece, vol. I., p. 212). 
\j ( 2 ) Gerhard, Griechische Mythologie, %% 155 and 156. 

( 3 ) Gerhard, Griechische Mythologie, gg 157-159. — Let us note 
that it was their dead brother's phallus that the Cabiri carried off 
and shut up in the chest of their mysteries (Clem. Alex., ProtrepL, 
p. 16, ed. Potter). The child Sosipolis changes into a serpent 
(Pausan., VI., 20, 3). In the xxxixth hymn of the Orphic Col- 
lection, addressed to the Corybante slain by his brothers, it is 
said that Demeter, changing his form, made him into the serpent 
which guards her temple. 

( 4 ) Gerhard, Griechische Mythologie, §§174 and 175. 



The Fratricide. 157 

the myth of the fratricide of the Cabiri, or the Cory- 
bantes, for the victim therein becomes the supreme 
mediator of the mysteries, and after his death his 
murderer-brothers are simply the ministers of his 
worship. As in the Cretan myth of Zagreus, assimi- 
lated afterwards to the Eleusinian Iacchos, it becomes 
mixed with the story, fundamental in the religions of 
Semitic paganism, of the young solar god who dies pe- 
riodically under the blows of an inimical power, and 
thereafter comes to life again. (*) In spite of the incon- 
testable intervention of these purely religious symbolic 
conceptions, linked to the beliefs of a naturalistic pan- 
theism, we may reasonably establish an affinity be- 
tween the fratricide of the Corybantes, or the Cabiri, 
and the primordial tradition of the fratricide in the 
family of the father of humanity, which we find in the 
fourth chapter of Genesis, free from all such alloy. 
In truth, in some parts of Asia Minor, the three Co- 
rybantes, "whom the sun saw the first to germinate 
from the trunk of trees/' were represented as the 
authors of the human race,( 2 ) just as elsewhere the 
Curetes,( 3 ) and again, in other traditions, the Titans,( 4 ) 
murderers of Zagreus.( 5 ) On the other hand, the 

( x ) Fr. Lenorniant, in Daremberg & Saglio's Dictionnaire des 
Antiquites, vol. I., p. 770. 

( 2 ) Fragment of Pindar, cited by the author of the Philosophu- 
mena, v., 7, p. 96. ed. Miller ; see Schneidewin, in the Philologu& t 
vol. I., p. 421 et seq. 

( 3 ) Same fragment. 

( 4 ) We will return to this in chapters vii. and x. 

( 5 ) See the texts indicated above, p. 52, note 1, which refers 
the origin of the immaterial part of man to the blood of Zagreus, 
on which the Titans, his ancestors, were fed. 



158 The Beginnings of History. 

sacred legends of Lemnos made Cabiros, "initiator 
of the sacred orgies," the first of mortals,^) that is, 
the brother immolated by his brothers, ( 2 ) and become 
the chief Cabiros, indeed the only Cabiros, as wor- 
shipped at Thessalonica.( 3 ) 

It is true that in the fable of their fratricide there 
are three Cabiri, or Corybantes, two of them slaying 
their younger brother; while, in the Bible story, 
the murder of Habel is a drama with two actors. 
But the Cabiri are sometimes three, sometimes 
two ; ( 4 ) indeed, duality is the most ancient form 
of these gods,( 5 ) and for that reason they are in so 
many localities identified with the Dioscuri, ( 6 ) and 
quite as much so with the Roman Penates,( 7 ) the 
pair which is manifested under a human form in 
the fraternal enemies, Romulus and Remus,( 8 ) and 
reappears in all the cities of Latium. ( 9 ) In the 

( x ) Fragment of Pindar, cited by the author of Philosophumena, 
v., 7, p. 96, ed. Miller. 

( 2 ) Fr. Lenormant, in Daremberg & Saglio's Dictionnaire des 
Antiquites, vol. I., p. 770. 

( 3 ) J. Firmic. Matern., De error, prof an. relig., p. 23. On the 
only Cabiros of Thessalonica, see the medals of this town, and 
also what Lactantius says, De falsa relig., I., 15, 8; Fr. Lenor- 
mant, in Daremberg & Saglio's Dictionnaire des Antiquites, vol. I., 

\j p. 769 et seq. 

( 4 ) Fr. Lenormant, in the same work, pp. 759 and 770. 

( 5 ) Fr. Lenormant, in the same work, pp. 759-763 and 769. 

( 6 ) Fr. Lenormant, in the same work, pp. 759, 760, 763 and 
767-769. 

( 7 ) Dionys. Halicarn, I., 61 and 68; Macrob., Saturn, III., 4; 
Serv. ad Virgil, JEneid, I., v. 378 ; III., v. 148. 

( 8 ) Preller, Rozmische Mythologie, p. 695. 

( 9 ) Comp. what Virgil says (JEneid, VII., v. 670) of the divine 
twins of the Tibur, whom Servius (a. h. I.) changes from two to 



The Fratricide. 159 

story of Genesis there are but the two sons of Adam, 
at the time of the fratricide, Qain and Habel, victim 
and murderer; but subsequently Sheth is born to 
take the place of Habel, and thus the sons of Adam, 
appearing first as two, are three in all, like the sons 
of Noah, author of the new post-diluvian race of 
men, and like their correspondents in the Qainite 
genealogy, the three sons of Lemek, are heads of 
races and inventors of the arts. Qatn, in some of 
the Semitic countries, where he was known under 
this appellation, may and must have been looked 
upon as a true Cabiros. His name, in fact, lends 
itself to a double signification, and consequently to 
one of those paronomasias so much after the taste of 
Semitic antiquity. We noticed above( 1 ) the meaning 
adopted and paraphrased by the redactor of the 
Jehovist document inserted in the fourth chapter 
of Genesis, a meaning philological ly entirely justi- 
fiable, and making the first-born of Adam "the 
creature, the offspring" par excellence. But there is 
another homophonous word, qain, coming from the 
root qun, and not from qdnah, which means " work- 
man, smith ;"( 2 ) this is the same which we find used, 
among the descendants of Qain, as the surname of 
the inventor of metallurgy, Tubal Qain, " Tubal the 
smith."( 3 ) That the name of Qain has been some- 
three, and what is said Ly the same Servius (ad Virgil, JEneid, 
VII., v. 678) about those of Prosneste. 
(!) P. 14, note 1. 

( 2 ) See Gelpke, NeutestamentUche Studien, in the Theologische 
Studien und Kritiken, 1849, p. 639 et seq. 

( 3 ) Genesis iv. 22. 



\J 



160 The Beginnings of History. 

times understood as having this signification,^) is 
proved to us by the fragment of one of the Phoeni- 
cian cosmogonies, included in the Sanchoniathon of 
Philo of Byblos.( 2 ) The first representatives of the 
human race therein are Technites, " the workman" and 
" the Autochthon made of earth," Greek translations, 
through which appear unquestionably, as Renan( 3 ) 
has already discovered, the original Semitic appella- 
tions, Qen for Qain (following the rules of Phoenician 
vocalization), and Adam min-hdaddmdth. " These 
are they," adds the narrator, " who found out how to 
mix chopped straw with clay to make bricks, how to 
dry them in the sun, and to build houses with roofs," 
a point which brings us back to the tradition of the 
building of the first town, attributed to Qain by the 
Bible, and the legend of " the month of brickmak- 
ing" among the Chaldeo-Babylonians. From these 
were born Agros and Agrotes, the ancestors of agri- 
culturists and hunters, occupations which allow of 
the restoration of their Phoenician appellations, 
Saete, a the man of the field,"( 4 ) and Qed, "the 

(*) This has been perfectly apprehended by Goldziher, who, in 
his mythic system, makes a Hephaistos of Qain {Der Mythos bei 
den Hebrseern, p. 132). [Eng. Trans., Lond. 1877, p. 113. Tr.] 

( 2 ) P. 20, ed. Orelli ; see first appendix at the end of this 
volume, II. E. 

( 3 ) Mem. de V Acad, des Inscr., new series, vol. XXIII., 2d Part, 
pp. 267 and 276. 

( 4 ) A curious confusion on the part of the Greek translator, no- 
ticed as early as the sixteenth century by Scaliger, brought about 
the insertion of a sentence to the effect that " Agros is specially 
honored at Byblos as the greatest of the gods, and that his Naos, 
carried upon a chariot, enjoyed a high veneration in Phoenicia" 
(see the representation of the Ark of Astarte, mounted on wheels, 



The Fratricide. 161 

hunter.'^ 1 ) These are the same who are called 
Aletes and Titans, probably Him and Nepilim;( 2 ) 
and their sons were Amynos and Magos (so far it 
seems impossible to restore the primitive form of 
these two appellations, which have been greatly 
changed), who taught men to live in villages and 
pasture flocks, this last feature indisputably recalling 
the three sons of Lemek, with whom ended the 
genealogy of the Qainites.( 3 ) 

In the Phoenician narrative, which we have just 
analysed according to the fragments of Sanchonia- 
thon, Adam and Qain seem to be brothers, instead of 
father and son. But it is a peculiarity of the Cabiri, 
when there are two of them, to be regarded as hold- 
ing at times a filial, at times a fraternal, relation to 
one another. The author of Philosophumena tells 

which we find upon the coins of Siclon, during the imperial epoch : 
Mionnet, Descr. de Med. Ant., vol. V., p. 367 et seq., and the 
description given by Macrobius, Saturn., I., 28, of that of the god 
of Heliopolis in Ccelesyria ; finally, it would be well to consult on 
this subject Abbe Greppo, Recherches sur les temples portatifs des 
Anciens, d V occasion d? un passage des Actes des Apotres, Lyons, 
1834, pp. 9-13). He has confounded Shadde, "the Almighty," 
with Sade, because in the Phoenician orthography there is no 
visible difference between the two words. 

(!) Schroeder, I think, is wrong in asserting {Die Phoenizische 
Sprache, p. 19) that the root cud in Phoenician simply meant " to 
fish," and not " to hunt." It was susceptible of both meanings, 
for the pair, Agreus and Halieus, in Sanchoniathon (p. 18, ed. 
Orelli), only become intelligible by restoring two original names, 
bearing a strong resemblance in sound to each other, and both 
originally derived from the same root. 

( 2 ) We will revert to this account in chapter vii., in reference 
to its analogy with Genesis vi. 1-4. 

(3) Genesis iv. 20-22. 

11 



VJ 



162 The Beginnings of History . 

us( 2 ) — and he rests his authority upon a fragment of 
one of the hymns sung during the performance of 
the Hellenized mysteries of Phrygia( 2 ) — that at Samo- 
thracia the name of Adam was sometimes given to 
the first of the Cabiri, the one who took the part of 
father. Probably it was there an abbreviation of 
Adamas or Adamastos, a surname frequently bestowed 
upon Hades,( 3 ) who seems akin to Axiokersos, the first 
male Cabiros of Samothracia.( 4 ) But in the third 
century of the Christian era, the Samothracian Adam 
was compared with the Adam of the Bible, and it 
was said that the name designated in him the arche- 
typal man,( 5 ) a kind of Adam Qadmou. The com- 
parisons we have just made show that perhaps this 
idea is not so foreign to the fundamental and original 
conception of the cult of the sacred isle in the Thra- 
cian sea as was formerly supposed. There is nothing 
even now so obscure, so difficult to settle, as the posi- 
tion of the Phoenician elements in the religion of 
Samothracia ; among modern scholars, some consider 
that they preponderate, and see a Kenanite importa- 
tion in the Cabiric cult ; others absolutely deny this 
Semitism, and regard the gods of Samothracia as 
exclusively Pelasgian; others again think that a 
Phoenician influence is grafted upon a Pelasgic stock, 
and that an assimilation began at an ancient epoch 

(i) V., 8, p. 108, ed. Miller. 

( 2 ) V., 9, p. 118, ed. Miller ; see Schneidewin, in the Philologus, 
vol. III., p. 261. 

( 3 ) Valckenaer ad Theocrit., Idyll., II., v. 34. 

( 4 ) Mnas. Patar. et Dionysodor. a.p Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod., 
Argonaut., I., v. 917; Etymol. Magn. et Gud., v. Kdj3sipoi. 

( 5 ) Philosophumena, V., 8, p. 108, ed. Miller. 



The Fratricide. 163 

between the Kazipoi or KdFzcpot, personifications of 
subterranean and demiurgic fire, and the Kabirim of 
Phoeuicia. In this uncertainty, although the name 
of the Samothracian Adam may be traced to a most 
probable Greek source, yet it would be impossible to 
contradict decidedly the opinions of such as are 
inclined to give it a Semitic origin. As a matter of 
fact, near the Boeotian Thebes, an undoubted centre 
of Phoenician colonization, where the Asiatic traits 
crop out with singular energy in the local religion, 
the two male Cabiri, associated with Demeter Cabiria, 
and regarded as the ancestors of the priestly family of 
Cabiri, who served in the sanctuary during the heroic 
ages, are named Prometheus and Aitnaios. (*) These 
names are peculiarly significant : Prometheus, in the 
most ancient traditions, is the father of Deucalion, 
from whom descend post-diluvian men ;( 2 ) he it was, 
beside, who endowed men with intellect, by commu- 
nicating to them the fire stolen from heaven, in spite 
of the prohibition of the gods ; later, it was he who 
formed of earth the first ancestors of mankind; so 
that he is at once the author of the human race in 
the order of generation, and a Technites of high 
degree. As to Aitnaios, his appellation shows him to 
be a hero of that sort of labor, based upon the use 
of fire, which his father, Prometheus, had taught 
him — a worker in metals and a smith. This pair, 
Prometheus and Aitnaios, considering the two as 
standing to each other in the relation of father and 
son, correspond with Autocthon and Technites in 

(!) Pausan., IX., 25, 5-7. 

( 2 ) We will return to this point in the tenth chapter. 



VJ 



164 The Beginnings of History. 

Sanchoniathon. This seems to be also the Greek 
translation of a Phoenician pair like Adam and Qain, 
or quite as likely, if we represent Prometheus as a 
workman and Aitnaios as the first hierophant of the 
mysteries upon which their traditions rest, like Qain 
and Hanok ; for the name which in the Bible is 
borne by the son of the fratricide, in honor of whom 
the first city is called, signifies " the initiator ; " and 
in him is personified initiation in all those mate- 
rial arts necessarily associated with an urban and 
stationary life, surrounded by the civilization neces- 
sary to its existence. 

Now, when the Greeks adopted the twelve Chal- 
daic signs of the Zodiac, and endeavored to assimilate 
them with their mythology, some among them saw 
the Cabiri in the constellation Gemini ;( l ) the greater 
number looked upon it as the Dioscuri,( 2 ) whose like- 
ness to the Cabiri we have but just established, and 

(!) Orph., Hymn xxxviii. ; Nigid. ap Schol. ad German., Arat., 
v. 147 ; Ampel., 3 ; corop. Sext. Empiric, p. 558.— Others dis- 
tinguish the two stars of the Dioscuri from the three orbs of the 
Cabiri: Polem. ap Schol. Florent. ad Eurip., Orest., v. 168, cor- 
rected by Madvig, Emendat. in Cic. De leg. et Acad., p. 137. 

( 2 ) Polem. ap Schol. ad Eurip., Orest., verse 1632; Ovid, Fast., 
V., v. 693-720; Serv. ad Virgil, uEneid, VI., v. 121; Hygin., 
Poet. Astron., II., 22 ; Nigid. ap Schol. ad German., Arat., v. 117. — 
As Preller justly remarks (Griechische Mythologie, 2d Ed., vol. II., 
p. 106), the assimilation of the Dioscuri to the twins of the Zodiac 
was a late thing, like the adoption of the Zodiac itself. We do 
not quote it, therefore, in order to try and establish an original 
relation for the fable of the Tyndarida? and the tradition asso- 
ciated by the Babylonians with the sign for the third month of 
the year, but solely because the assimilation could not have been 
made had it not been for a certain exterior resemblance between 
this tradition and their mythologie history. 



The Fratricide. 165 

who, before this identification, in their most ancient 
conception, are not hostile brothers, — they present, 
on the contrary, a type of close affection, — but bro- 
thers forever divided in their celestial life, con- 
demned to spend their time alternately, the one 
under the earth among the dead, the other in heaven 
among the stars. ( x ) Others finally thought that they 
recognized in the zodiacal twins, Amphion and 
Zethos,( 2 ) whom Preller( 3 ) has so aptly called the 
Dioscuri of Boeotia, the heroic builders of the walls 
of Thebes,( 4 ) for they are neither enemies nor sepa- 
rated like the Tyndaridse, their fabulous history 
resembling, in another way, that which we believe 
to have existed among the Chaldeans and Babylo- 
nians in regard to the two personages placed in this 
celestial abode. ( 5 ) On the obverse of the coins of the 
Greek city of Istros in Moesia, an ingenious method 
of symbolizing the alternate existence of the Dioscuri 
in the heaven was adopted : their two heads, the 
face toward you, are placed side by side, but one 
inverted as regards the other, so that when one 
appears to the spectator in his normal position, the 

(!) Odyss., A, v. 298-303; Pindar, Mm., X., v. 55 et seq. ; 
Apollodor., III., 11, 2; Hygin., Fab. 251. 

( 2 ) Schol. ad Germanic. , Arat., v. 147. 

(3) Griechische Mythologie, 2d Ed., vol. II., p. 31. 

( 4 ) Apollon. Rhod., Argonaut., I., v. 740 and 735, and Schol. 
a. h. I.; Syncell., p. 125; Horat., Ad Pison., v. 394. 

(5) The mythic cycle of Thebes presented, in two distinct stories, 
connected with different names, the two ideas, most commonly 
united in one, of the brother-builders of one city, Amphion and 
Zethos, and the inimical brothers, Eteocles and Polynices. 



\J 



166 The Beginnings of History. 

other is upside down, standing on his head.Q Chal- 
deo-Babylonian art had adopted the same combi- 
nation to symbolize the opposition of the twins of 
the Zodiac. Their ordinary representation, upon 
cylinders of pietra dura, which were used as seals, 
consisted of two little virile figures placed one above 
the other, inverted, the feet of one touching those 
of the other.( 2 ) 

It remains to us now to establish a last fact, 
which appears to possess an importance of its own 
in this connection. The third month of the Chaldeo- 
Assyrian year is dedicated to " Shin, eldest son of 
Bel,"( 3 ) the lunar god, and not far back we saw( 4 ) that 
in the cuneiform inscription called that " of the Bar- 
rel-Cylinder of Sargon," it is he who is called " the 
royal twin." In fact, this god has a brother, originally 
of an unmixed solar nature, ( 5 ) who presides over the 
following month, that of Duz ;( 6 ) this is Adar, the 
Hercules of the Babylonians and Assyrians. The 
two divine brothers, sons of Bel, appear as antago- 
nists in a curious narrative unearthed by Ctesias( 7 ) 

(!) Eckhel, Doctrina Numorum Veterum, vol. II., p. 14; Millin, 
Galerie Mythologique, pi. cxlix., No. 524. 

( 2 ) Cullimore, Oriental Cylinders, Nos. 65, 75 and 95; Lajard, 
Culte de Mithra, pi. xxvi., Nos. 1 and 3; xxvii., No. 5; liv. a, 
No. 6. 

( 3 ) Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 33, 1. 38, a. 
(*) P. 147, note 1. 

( 5 ) Fr. Lenormant, Essai de Commentaire des Fragments de Be- 
rose, p. 113 et seq. ; Les dieux de Babylone et de V Assyrie, p. 23 
ct seq. 

( 6 ) Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 33, 1. 39, a. 

( 7 ) Athen., XII., p. 530. 



The Fratricide. 167 

and Nicolas of Damascus,^) in which they receive 
the two names of Nannaros( 2 ) and Parsondas.( 3 ) Nan- 
naros by stratagem succeeds in capturing his rival, 
proud of his herculean strength, ( 4 ) who, being held 
captive, gradually sinks to the last degree of effemi- 
nacy and to the loss of his manhood. This singular 
effeminacy, which other narrations likewise attribute 

(i) Nicol. Damasc, fragm. 10, ed. C. Miiller, Fragm. historic. 
Graec., vol. III., pp. 359-3U3. 

( 2 ) Nannar, "the illuminator," from the root nahar, is one of 
the most common terms for Shin. 

( 3 ) The original form of this name has not yet been recon- 
structed with perfect certainty ; it seems, however, evident that 
it includes, as the second element in its composition, the appel- 
lation of Sandon, which the Greeks give us as one of the names of 
the Assyrian Hercules (Beros., ap Agath., De reb. Justinian., II., p. 
62, ed. of Paris ; Ammian. Marcell. , XIV. , 8, compared with Dion 
Chrysostom, Orat. xxxiii., vol. II., pp. 1 and 23, ed. Reiske ; see 
Fr. Lenormant, Essai de Commentate des Fragments de Berose, p. 
145 et seq.). But of what Assyrian form is Sandon the Hellenic 
transcription ? So far it is not known. The epithet of candann'u 
or cindannu, applied to Adar, which Oppert thought akin to it, 
rests upon an erroneous reading ; it should in reality be trans- 
cribed dandannu, " the very strong, the very powerful," a form in 
Palpel, derived from the root danan, "to be strong, powerful." 

( 4 ) In fact, Adar, when he appears at the height of his power 
and strength, is " the Sun of the South, the Sun of Noon" (Cuneif. 
Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. I., pi. 70, col. 4, 1. 5, compared with 
vol. III., pi. 43, col. 4, 1. 15 ; vol. II., pi. 57, 1. 51, c-d). In the 
special cult of the famous city of Simpar or Sipar, the Sepharvaim 
of the Bible, the Sippara of classic geographers, Adar-Malik 
(Adrammelek in the Biblical transcription, 2 Kings xvii. 31), 
meaning "Adar King," like the Moloch of Phoenicia and Pales- 
tine, is identified with Shamash, or at least represents one of his 
aspects, the implacable Summer Sun, who at the hour of noon, 
when the intensity of his flame reaches its culminating point, 
devours the productions of the earth, and can be appeased only 
by human victims. 



168 The Beginnings of History. 

to Adar,( x ) and which became the origin of the fable 
introduced into Greece from Asia Minor, of Hercules 
spinning at the feet of Omphale,( 2 ) is simply an eu- 
phemistic variation of the periodic death which he 
passes through, like all the solar deities of Asia,( 3 ) in 
the evening,( 4 ) and in the winter, when he is burned 
up after the manner of the Greek Hercules upon the 
sunset pyre.( 5 ) For the sun, after having been all- 

(!) Fr. Lenormant, La Legende de Semiramis, p. 51 et seq. ; 
Gelzer, in the Zeitschr. fur JEgypt. Sprache und Alterthumskunde, 
1875, p. 129. 

( 2 ) Ottfried Miiller, Kleine Deutsche Schriften, vol. II., p. 101; 
Movers, Die Phoenizier, vol. I., pp. 469-477; R. Rochette, Mem. 
de V Acad, des Inscrip., new series, vol. XVII., 2d Part, p. 232 et 
seq. ; Maury, Histoire des Religions de la Grece, vol. III., p. 152 
et seq. ; Fr. Lenormant, La Legende de Semiramis, p. 57 et seq. 

( 3 ) It is this periodic and voluntary death of Adar, as solar god, 
which, as I think, inspired the fragment of a bilingual hymn 
published in Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 80, 2, 
rev. ; see Fr. Lenormant, Les dieux de Baby lone et de V Assyrie, 
p. 24. 

( 4 ) In Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. III., pi. 53, 2, 1. 32 and 
33, the solar spouse of the planet Venus is Shamash in the morn- 
ing and Adar in the evening ; see Gelzer, in Zeitschr. fur JEgypt. 
Spr. und Alterthumskunde, 1875, p. 129 et seq. ; Fr. Lenormant, 
Gazette Archeologique, 1876, p. 59. 

( 5 ) Upon the pyre of the Chaldeo- Assyrian Hercules, identical 
with the pyre of Sardanapalus in the legend transformed into 

VI pretended history, see the dissertation of Ottfried Miiller, Sandon 
und Sardanapal (in his Kleine Deutsche Schriften, vol. II., pp. 100- 
113), and the Memoir e of Rochette, sur V Her cute assyrien et phe- 
nicien, considere dans ses rapports avec V Hercule grec, principalement 
a V aide des monuments figures, in the second part of volume XVII. 
of the Memoir es de V Academic des Inscriptions, new series. 

The sacred pyramid of the palace of Nineveh, represented by 
some writers as the tomb of Ninus (Diod. Sic. , TL, 7 ; Ovid, Meta- 
morphos., IV., v. 88), by others as that of Sardanapalus, was in 



The Fratricide. 169 

powerful at noon, during his diurnal revolution, and 
during the summer solstice in his annual revolution, 
invariably succumbs to the fatal attacks of night and 
winter ; deprived of the strength which later he will 
recover, he is represented as no longer possessing 
any manhood, or else as being dead, but about to 
revive shortly ; these are the two forms of the same 
fundamental idea. Adar-Parsondas falls each eve- 
ning into the power of his brother-rival, Shin-Nan- 
naros, who deprives him of his strength and makes 
him half a woman; thus the two brothers succeed 
each other in the dominion over nature and in the 
favor of the supreme master of heaven. They alter- 
nate like the Dioscuri ; and as night is identified with 
death, the evening victor, regarded as the elder by 
the Chaldeo-Babylonians, slays his younger brother, 
whom he sends to the abode of the dead. 

Some individuals will doubtless be induced to 
draw from these last observations an argument in 
favor of Golclhizer 7 s theory^ 1 ) which sees in the his- 
tory of Qain and Habel a myth of the struggle 
between day and night, on condition, however, of 
reversing the characteristics which he assigns to each 
of these personages. But this conclusion is far from 
being a necessary consequence, and here the logical 
chain of facts seems to me to run as follows : 

truth a divine tomb of Adar, of whom these two personages are 
heroic forms (Fr. Lenormant, JEssai de Commentaire des Fragm. de 
Berose, p. 365 ; La Legende de Semiramis, pp. 41 and 52 ; Les 
dieuz de Babylone et de V Assyrie, p. 25. 

( x ) Der Mythos bet den Hebrse-ern, pp. 130-183. [Eng. Trans., 
London, 1877, pp. 110-114. Tr.] 



VJ 



170 The Beginnings of History. 

1st. Existence of the ancient tradition of the 
fratricide. 

2d. This tradition, according to a calendar system 
which we will study in our sixth chapter, is asso- 
ciated with the third month of the year. 

3d. In attributing a protecting deity to each 
month, the preference is given for this month to the 
deity whose mythical history approached nearest to 
the tradition to be connected henceforth with the 
month and its zodiacal sign. 

In regard to the other myths which I have passed 
in review in the preceding pages, I will recur to 
them at such length as to establish a certain paral- 
lelism between them and the Bible narrative. 

It should be remarked how well some of these 
myths, in the character which they attribute to the fra- 
tricide, agree with the interpretation of the Church 
which sees in Habel the most ancient figure of Christ, 
at the very outset of man's history. For all these 
myths that include the conception of a young god, ap- 
pearing as saviour and mediator, allying himself with 
man, and consummating his work of salvation by 
passing through suffering and death, appeal in a 
special manner to the mind of the religious thinker. 
Doubtless they refer to the vicissitudes of the life of 
nature, which they express symbolically, but one can- 
not but acknowledge that they also include something 
more, the reflection of a spiritual verity, in part ob- 
scured by an impure alloy, a feeble reflex of the 
divine promises of redemption made to man imme- 
diately after the Fall. The Christian could not afford 
to despise a single one of these intuitions, which are 



The Fratricide. 171 

vague and incomplete, but none the less providential 
for that reason, and which shine out here and there 
amid the darkness of paganism. It is always this 
expectation of a Saviour and a Redeemer, this aspira- 
tion toward a higher spiritual law, toward the reign 
of a juster and more merciful God, which was never 
completely extinguished in the souls of the nations 
crushed beneath the weight of bloody, material and 
fatalistic religions. 

I have been obliged to follow a long chain of 
developments, in order to deduce therefrom all the 
reasons which have led me to the conviction that the 
Chaldeo-Baby Ionian tradition must include, among 
its narratives of the early days of humanity, a story 
of the first murder and of the first foundation of a 
city analogous to that of Genesis^ 1 ) If this hypo- 
thesis be correct, if the arguments which I have 
adduced in its favor seem to suffice for bringing 
about its acceptance, we shall have a new fact added 
to the demonstration of the exact and continuous 
parallelism, one might almost say the identity, of the 
two traditions, Biblical and Chaldaic. But among 
the Chaldeans, a stationary and civilized people from 
the remotest antiquity, inhabitants of great towns, the 
narration could not bear the peculiar stamp which is 
evident in the fourth chapter of Genesis, where the 
impress of the nomadic and pastoral spirit is so 
strongly marked, the wicked brother, ill-pleasing 
in God's sight, being a tiller of the ground, and the 
righteous brother, well-beloved of heaven, a shep- 

(!) Les premihes civilisations, vol. II., p. 80 et seq. 



172 The Beginnings of History. 

herd.( x ) The extended comparison, which a suffi- 
cient array of facts will enable us to establish a little 
farther on (chapter vii.) between the Chaldaic and the 
Biblical account of the Deluge, will put it in our 
power to prove the same sort of difference in tone 
there, too, while we shall observe how much more 
natural and human are the characteristics of the 
Bible personages, in consequence of the sweeping 
away of that exuberant polytheism which stamps 
the Chaldeo-Babylonian legend. There is no man- 
ner of doubt that if we had an original version 
of the Chaldaic account of the story of the fra- 
tricide, to place side by side with that of Genesis, it 
would furnish material for similar observations. We 
have ample grounds for believing that such a story 
would not bear upon its face the same morally 
instructive character as that in the Bible, but would 
appear as the result of a blind fatalism, a necessity 
analogous to that of the laws of nature, leaving 
no room for a severe condemnation of the mur- 
derer. Indeed, it is not impossible that the wrong- 
doing in the case may have been imputed to the 



(!) After the same idea and in the same spirit, we find that, in 
verses 20 and 22 of the same chapter (iv.), the whole account 
belonging to the Jehovist document, of the sons of Lemek the 
Qainite, Yabal, the father of the pastoral races, is born of the wife 
called 'Adah, "beauty," and Tubal, the smith, of the one named 
Qiilah, " shadow, dimness.'* See what is said in our fifth chapter 
in regard to the antagonism between these women. 

In regard to the constant preference of the oldest Bible narra- 
lives for the shepherd as against. the tiller of the soil, see the 
acute remarks of Goldhizer (Der Mythos bei den Hebrseern, pp. 95- 
104 [Eng. Trans., London, 1877, pp. 79-89. Tr.]). 



The Fratricide. 173 

victim. We have some reason to suppose that the 
Chaldeans justified the murderer, as did the Ro- 
mans in the case of Romulus against Remus. If, 
as we have conjeetured, they compared the quarrel 
of the two sons of the first man with the struggle 
between Shin* and Adar, there is no doubt about it, 
for the Chaldeans, dhTering in this from other 
ancient peoples, gave the moon the precedence over 
the sun, so that, of the deities representing the two 
cosmic luminaries, Shin held the place of preference ; 
he it was whom they regarded as their very special 
benefactor and protector, making him the founder 
and supreme type of royal power. 

In the Bible, on the other hand, and as far back 
as the ancient Jehovist document, made use of by 
the final redactor of Genesis, the murder of Habel 
is the first crime, following, in the second genera- 
tion, the first sin, and flowing from this source of 
wrong-doing, as a logical consequence, though not 
an unavoidable one, for Yahveh warns Qain, when 
his evil disposition is first aroused, of the ambush 
prepared for him by sin,' 1 ) so emphatically that it is 
in the full exercise of his moral liberty that he allows 
himself to be drawn into the commission of crime, 
just as Adam let himself be led into sin. Besides all 
this, when relating, a little before, the different recep- 
tion given by God to the offerings of Qain and Ha- 
bel,^) the author evidently did not intend to attribute 
a capricious preference, unworthy of His power, to the 
Eternal One, nor to represent Qain as fatalistically 

(!) Genesis iv. 6 and 7. ( 2 ) Genesis iv. 4 and 5. 



174 The Beginnings of History. 

predestined to commit this crime and rebuked before- 
hand. ( x ) It is the difference in the nature of the 
offerings which determines the difference in their 
acceptableness. The inspired author makes a prac- 
tical application of a liturgic instruction, which 
agrees with the legal commands of the Thorah, the 
principles of which he carries back to the very origin 
of man. The sacrifice of Habel is the first model of 
the bloody sacrifice; and therefore it is especially 
pleasing to Yahveh. Thus the necessity for this 
kind of sacrifice, imposed by sin as a form of ransom, 
is proclaimed, and we find it prescribed to man even 
at the very epoch when he was not yet permitted by 
God to slay animals, that he might use their flesh for 
food. I will not examine into the possible antiquity 
of this conception in this place; this could not be 
done short of making a complete study of the devel- 
opment of religious thought in Israel ; but it is 
undoubtedly the meaning intended to be conveyed 
by the author of the Jehovist document. ( 2 ) 

I will not conclude this chapter without referring 
to a philological detail, which seems to me to indicate 
that the story was brought from Chaldea in a definite 

( x ) As regards the interpretation of St. John Chrysostom [Ho- 
mil. in Genes., XVIII., 5), that Habel chose of the best of his 
flocks, while Qain offered "whatever came to his hand, without 
choice, nothing in the expressions of the text either suggests or 
justifies it. 

( 2 ) Conformably to the spirit of the new law, which substitutes 
the merit of faith for the ancient legal observances, the Epistle 
to the Hebrews says (xi. 4) : "By faith it was that Abel offered 
a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, and that he was declared 
righteous, God Himself testifying of his gifts ; and because of it 
he speaks yet after he is dead." 



The Fratricide. 175 

shape, a traditional redaction which the author of the 
Jehovist document has preserved at least in part. 

Yahveh said to Qain, on seeing the rankling 
jealousy which had sprung up in his heart against 
his brother Habel : " When thou hast not done well, 
sin places itself in ambush at thy door, and its appe- 
tite is turned toward thee.'^ 1 ) The participle robeg, 
here employed as a substantive, constitutes the only 
known Hebrew example of the verb rdbag taken 
in that sense which in Arabic is invariably given 
to rebaga, and sometimes to rebadha, whence the lion 
is described as rabbddh, " that which holds itself in 
ambush," and mordbedh is a "soldier of the great 
guard." In Assyrian, on the other hand, rabag has 
the two current acceptations — the one as frequent as 
the other — of " lying down, resting," or of " lying in 
ambush, spying." Furthermore, the Assyrian-Semitic 
name used to designate one of the principal classes of 
demons is rabig, " he who holds himself in ambush, 
spreader of snares," corresponding to the Akkadian 
mashkim.{ 2 ) The seven Rabici are numbered among 
the most redoubtable of the malevolent and infernal 
spirits.( 3 ) We find them again in the Rabidhaton of 
Musselman demonology, where they are represented as 
fallen angels, who were cast out together with Adam. 
The demons, moreover, according to the Chaldaic 
conception, do not limit themselves, as here repre- 

(!) Genesis iv. 7. 

C 2 ) Fr. Lenormant, Die Magie und Wahrsagekunst der Chaldseer, 
p. 24 et seq. ; 30 et seq. 

( 3 ) The great magic incantation of Cuneif. Inscr. of West. Asia, 
vol. IV., pi. 15, translated hy Sayce in the Records of the Fast, vol. 
IX., p. 141 et seq., is directed against them. 



176 The Beginnings of History. 

sented, to lying in wait for man at the door of his 
dwelling, attacking him to his face, or following 
behind him in order to throw themselves upon him 
when he is not on his guard : ( x ) 

" They, the door does not keep them back, the bar 
of the door does not repel them ; within the door 
they insinuate themselves like snakes."( 2 ) 

Here is a conjuration, intended to keep them away 
from the king : 

"Into the palace they shall never enter; to the 
gate of the palace they shall never approach; the 
king they shall never attack."( 3 ) 

The moral thought of Genesis iv. 7 may be justly 
compared with Psalm xxxvii. 8 : 

" Cease from anger, and forsake wrath ; fret not 
thyself in anywise to do evil." 

The analogy of its imagery has been made use of 
in the following verse of the first Epistle of St. 
Peter :( 4 ) 

"Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary, 

( x ) " They shall never attack me in hostility to my face ; — they 
shall never walk in my steps" [panya ai yulammenuni — ana arkiya 
ai illikuni), are the words of a deprecatory incantation {Guneif. 
Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 1, col. 3, 1. 51-54). 
\j ( 2 ) Guneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 1, col. 1, 1. 29- 

33: sunu daltav ul ikallusunuti — medilu ul yutarsunuti — ina dalti 
Jama ciri ittalalu. I quote here only the Assyrian version, which 
is easily understood by a greater number of philologists than the 
primitive Accadian text. See, for details, the analysis of both 
texts in my Etudes Accadiennes, vol. III., p. 79. 

(3) Guneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 5, col. 3, 1. 70- 
75: ana ekalli ai irubuni — ana bab ekalli ai idhuni — ana sarri 
ai idhuni. 

(4) W 1 Pet. v., 8. 



The Fratricide. 177 

the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking 
whom he may devour." 

This last comparison must have been a common 
one in the poetic language of the Jews and the 
neighboring nations. We find it far back in the 
oldest lyric poetry of Chaldea. 

"Thou art an hyena,^) which puts itself in motion 
to carry off the little cattle ; thou art a lion which 
prowls round about," ( 2 ) says an ancient Accadian 
hymn, addressed to the goddess of the planet Venus, 
which has come down to us accompanied by an inter- 
linear translation in Assyrian.( 3 ) 

Last observation. In the thirteenth verse of the 
fourth chapter of Genesis, Qain, stricken with the 
divine curse after his fratricide, says to Yahveh : 
" My crime is too great for me to carry the burden 
of it ; " and he implores some lessening of his con- 
demnation. Some modern interpreters translate : 
" My punishment is too great," taking 'avon here in a 
sense which is not usual. This does not seem to me 
justifiable. The idea of the sin, the burden of which 
weighs down and crushes him who has committed it, 
with the weight of moral remorse and of the material 
punishment to which it exposes him even in this 

(*) The Accadian has lik-barra, the Asssyrian barbaru, two ex- 
pressions given as synonyms of dhit, the 6ah of the Bible (Isa. 
xiii. 21), which is the hyena. (See W. Houghton in the Trans- 
actions of the Society of Biblical Archseology, yol. V. , p. 328.) 

( 2 ) barbaru Sa ana liqe puhadi suluku atti — nesu sa ina qirbiti 
ittanallaku atti. 

( 3 ) Friedrich Delitzsch, Assyrische Lesestucke, 2d Ed., p. 73, 1. 
11-14. 

12 



VJ 



178 The Beginnings of History. 

life, is frequently expressed in the Bible. It will 
suffice to recall this verse of a Psalm : 

" For mine iniquities are gone over my head : as 
a heavy burden they are too heavy for me/'f) 

(!) Psalm xxxviii. 5. [Heb.] All the first part of Psalm xxxviii. 
is remarkable for the fact that it hardly contains an expression 
that we do not find in these Chaldaic penitential psalms, the 
fragments of which have come down to us. The following com- 
parisons speak for themselves : 

A. Psalm xxxviii. 2 : 

" Yahveh ! punish me not in Thy anger, and chastise me not in 
Thy fury." 

Ouneif. Inscr. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 10, obv. 1. 1-2: "Of 
the lord, who appeases the violent anger of his heart ! " 

(sa beliv naqqum libbisu ana asriiu Utura.) 

Ibid. 1. 48-51 : 

" The lord in the anger of his heart has reddened (with fury) 
against me : 

the god, in the fury of his heart, has weighed me down." 

(beluv ina uqqum libbisu ikkilmananni — iliv ina uzzi libbisu 
yusamhiranni. ) 

B. Psalm xxxviii. 4 : 

" There is no soundness in my flesh by reason of thine anger, 
there is no more vigor in my bones by reason of my sin." 

Ibid. 6 : 

" My wounds are infected and corrupt on account of my folly." 

Ouneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 3, col. 1, 1. 5-10: 

"He who does not honor his god is broken like a reed; his 
ulcer oppresses him like a clog. He who has not his goddess for 
a guardian, his flesh is bruised." 

(la palih ilasu kima qane ihtaggi va — buanisu kima gihini yusallit 
— sa istar paqida la isu sirisu yusahhah.) 

C. Psalm xxxviii. 7 : 

" I am bent, bowed down to the last degree ; I go mourning all 
the day long." 

Ibid. 9 : 

"I am feeble and sore broken, the trouble of my heart drags 
groans from me," 



The Fratricide. 179 

The same idea and the same image exist in the 
religious poetry of Chaldea. The sin and the curse 
which it entails are therein represented as a burden, 
and like a dark pall which overpowers the man by 
its weight. "The voice which curses the covering 
like a pall and charges it with its weight.'^ 1 ) And 
in the outpourings of repentance the deity is implored 
to lighten this burden and to tear away this pall. 

"I have committed faults, who will take them 
away! 

My blasphemies are many, tear them away like a 
veil."( 2 ) 

And elsewhere : 

" That my omission, my bad act, my error may be 
absolved ! 

Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 10, obv. 1. 58-61, 
rev. 1. 1-4 : 

"lam prostrated, and no one holds out a hand to me ; 

I weep and none seizes my hand. 

I cry my prayer, and no one hears me ; 

I am emaciated, languishing, and I am not healed." 

[astawH e va manman qati ul igabat — abki va qatateya ul idhu — 
qube aqabbi manman ul isimananni — uSsuMku kitmaku ul anadal.) 

D. Psalm xxxviii. 22 and 23 : 

" Forsake me not, O Yahveh ! My God, be not far from me ! 

Come in haste to my help, Lord, my salvation ! " 

Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 10, rev. 1. 35-38: 

" Lord, thou wilt not reject thy servant. 

From the midst of the waters of the tempest, come to his 
succor ! take his hand ! " 

(beluv ardaka la tasakib — ina me rusumti nadi qassu gabat.) 

f 1 ) Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 7, col. 1,1. 14 
and 15: qulu kuru kima cubati iktumsu va ita'nasass'u. 

( 2 ) Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 10, rev. 1. 41- 
44: anna ebus saru litbal. — qillatua ma'dati kima gubati suhut. 



180 The Beginnings of History. 

That my sin may be absolved ! and that which 
weighs me down be lifted ! 

That the seven winds may carry away my groans ! 

That I could tear away my error ! that the bird 
might carry it to the sky ! 

That the fish-line might carry it away ! that the 
river might bear it off!"^) 

(!) Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 66, 2, obv. 1. 11- 
15 [Col. 1, 1. 45-49. Tr.] (this document is written only in 
Semitic- Assyrian) : — lippatru amua limmanya nistatua. — ' anti 
lippatir kasiti lirmu. — tanihiya litbalu sibit sari. — lushut ami. igguru 
ina same liseli. — itirti nuni litbal libil na'tu. 



\J 



CHAPTER V. 

THE SHETHITES AND THE QAINITES. 

The Book of Genesis, in its completed state, as it 
has come down to us, contains, in succession, two gene- 
alogies of the descendants of the first human pair, as 
far as the deluge ; first giving that of the Qainites 
in chapter iv., then that of the children of Sheth in 
chapter v. Thus we are enabled to trace the par- 
allel filiation of the accursed race and the blessed 
race, until we come to that righteous man, who, 
finding grace in the sight of the Eternal, in the 
midst of the universal corruption of men, is saved 
from the cataclysm, and becomes the father of a 
new human family. 

The character of the two genealogies is very dif- 
ferent; there is an absolutely distinct coloring in 
each, and they come down to us from quite different 
sources. The last compiler adopted them from two 
older books, both already regarded as sacred, which 
he made use of, undertaking to establish a concord- 
ance between them. The genealogy of the Shethites 
in chapter v. belongs wholly to the Elohist document, 
with the single exception of one verse (the 29th), 
which, at first glance, shows itself to be distinct from 
the rest by a different tone and mode of redaction. 

181 



VJ 



182 The Beginnings of History. 

The genealogy the Qainitseo in the fourth chapter 
belongs, in the nature of a continuation, to the story 
of the fratricide and of the curse of Qain, and is 
derived, like that, from the Jehovist document. It 
is followed, moreover, by two verses bearing most 
markedly the characteristics of the redaction of this 
document, verses which give for two generations the 
early portion of the list of Adam's descendants 
through Sheth^ 1 ) speedily cut short by the insertion 
of the "Tholedoth of Adam,"( 2 ) which begins over 
again with the first man. It seems quite evident, 
therefore, that the Jehovist book contained the 
double table of the descendants of both Qain and 
Sheth, but that the final editor suppressed the greater 
part of the second genealogy, as being a repetition 
of that in the Elohist document, which he preferred. 
He preserved only the beginning, that it might serve 
as connecting link between the two genealogies, 
drawn from different sources, and verse 29 of the 
fifth chapter, which he inserted in his extract from the 
Elohist book in order to explain the name of Noah. 
Such is the opinion of Hupfeld,( 3 ) in which Kayser 
coincides ; ( 4 ) it appears to me to be the only admis- 
sible one, and I do not hesitate to give it the prefer- 
ence over the first theory set forth on this subject by 
rationalistic criticism, a theory which Schrader has 

(i) IV. 25 and 26. 

n v. i. 

( 3 ) Die Quellen der Genesis und die Art ihrer Zusammensetzung , 
p. 129 et seq. 

( 4 ) Das vorexilische Buck der Urgeschichte Israels und seine Er- 
weiterungen, p. 7. 



The Bhethites and the Qainites. 183 

lately undertaken to defend,^) and according to 
which the Jehovist document must originally have 
made Noah a descendant of Qain and son of 
the Lemek of this line.( 2 ) Such a theory seems to 
me too utterly opposed to the fundamental spirit of 
the Jehovist document, and to all the ideas of the 
Israelites, to be admissible. A little farther on, we 
shall see, in the history of the sons of Noah,( 3 ) how 
much stress the Jehovist writer lays on tracing back 
the providential condemnation which rests upon cer- 
tain nations, and of which Israel is the agent, to a 
curse which was pronounced against their first an- 
cestor. He shows them to be subjected, if one may 
so express it, to the consequences of a special and 
secondary sin. Therefore he never could have been 
the one to trace back the descent of the righteous 
man, chosen of God, to the family of the Accursed, 
the prototype of wickedness ; he necessarily must 
belong to a pure race, standing in the same relation to 
that of Qain as Yisrael to the nations of Eclom, ' Am- 
nion, Moab, who, though his brother-peoples, were 
not pleasing to Yahveh. Moreover, it is only neces- 
sary to study attentively the words of chap. v. 29, and 
the allusion contained therein to iii. 17-19, to feel 
quite confident that the author regards Noah merely 
as sharing the consequences of Adam's transgression, 
for which he was called to "console" humanity, and 



( 1 ) Studien zur Kritik und ErMserung der biblischen JJrgeschichte, 
pp. 122-124 and 134. 

( 2 ) According to this theory, verses 25 and 26 of chapter iv. 
would constitute an addition by the final redactor. 

(3) IX. 22-25. 



\J 



184 The Beginnings of History. 

that he was by no means reckoned among the race 
weighed down by the additional load of the maledic- 
tion of Qain. 

This theory, however, rests partly upon an unde- 
niable fact, which we cannot ignore in our examina- 
tion of the matter, and that is the singular and 
striking similarity existing between the Qainite and 
Shethite genealogies, which are very nearly, to a cer- 
tain extent, the reproductions one of the other. It 
is true that in one case there are but seven names, 
while in the other there are ten; but, as has been 
long since recognized, being indeed a self-evident 
fact, the name of Enosh, given as the son of Sheth, 
is in Hebrew the exact synonym of Adam, both 
alike signifying "the man" par excellence. Now, 
taking this Enosh for our point of departure, we 
find for six generations the same consecutive names, 
with but very slight variations of form and a mis- 
placing of two of them; on the one hand, in the 
descent from Adam through Qain; on the other, 
in the descent from Sheth through Enosh. Thus 
we have 



THE ONE SIDE: 


ON" THE OTHER: 


Adam, 


Enosh, 


Qain, 


Qenan, 


Hanok, 


Mahalalel, 


'Irad, 


Yered, 


MeMiael, 


Hanok, 


Methushael, 


Methiishelah, 


Lemek, 


Lemek, 




Noah, 



Yabal, Yubal, Tubal, Shem, Ham, Yapheth. 



The Shethites and the Qainites. 185 

The genealogy of the Qainites concludes with three 
heads of races, sons of Lemek ; that of the Enoshites 
with three heads of races, grandsons of Lemek. 
In the last instance simply one generation more is 
introduced, that of Noah, between Lemek and the 
division of the family into three branches. 

Quite a number of exegetes have come to the con- 
clusion, from the fact of this remarkable parallelism, 
that the two genealogies originally made but one, and 
that they should be regarded as two versions of the 
same tradition. This conclusion is to my mind ex- 
aggerated and inadmissible. On the whole, there is 
an assonance between the two sets of names, but no 
identity. On the contrary, the very names which 
resemble each other and are correspondants, abso- 
lutely change their signification according to the list 
to which they belong ; they have an evil signification 
among the descendants of Qain, and a favorable one 
among those of Sheth. For instance, Mehiiiael, 
"stricken by God," corresponds with Mahalal'el, 
" praise or glory of God ; " 'Irad, " fugitive," is the 
correspondant of Yered, " descent," or rather, " ser- 
vice." In other cases the meaning of the name 
remains the same, but its change of place gives this 
meaning a different application in the different tables 
of filiation. Hanok signifies " initiator," but the son 
of Qain, whose name is connected with the founding 
of the first town, personifies the commencement of 
material and secular arts, while Hanok, of the line 
of Sheth, who walked three hundred and sixty-five 
years with Yahveh, God taking him while yet alive 
to Himself, indicates the beginning of religious truth 



\J 



186 The Beginnings of History. 

and the spiritual life. The truth, then, seems to be, 
that both genealogies were constructed artificially and 
contemporaneously, in order to establish an exact and 
constant parallelism between the two lines of descent 
from the criminal and accursed son and from the 
just and blessed son, by marking the contrast between 
malediction and election in the signification of the 
names of either line, which resemble each other so 
closely in sound. ( l ) 

I just now remarked that there is a vast differ- 
ence, in coloring, character and form, between the 
two genealogies which follow each other in Genesis, 
but which in reality spring from different sources. 
Nothing can be drier or more monotonous in form 
than that of the Shethites, adapted in chapter v. 
from the Elohist document ; and nothing could more 
intensely bear the impression of that peculiar kind of 
Euhemerism, characteristic of the Bible, and inspired 
by its rigorous monotheism, which reduces the heroes 
of popular tradition to strictly human proportions, 
despoiling them as far as possible of their allegorical 
character, though accepting and enrolling them in the 
record of the oldest memories transmitted to the people 
of Israel from their ancestors. It is all reduced to an 
unvarying dead level, cleared pitilessly of every trace 

(!) It is hardly necessary to insist upon the point, that these 
names on either list have not and could not have any real historic 
value. They are Hebrew, and it is certain that Hebrew was not 
spoken before the Flood. They then must be significant appella- 
tions, intentionally combined in such a way that each one, 
according to its meaning, is made to express an idea that it was 
desired to fix, to a greater or less degree, upon one or the other 
genealogy. 



The Shet kites and the Qainites. 187 

of the mythic fancy which had heretofore enfolded 
these personages, conceived in accordance with the 
symbolic genius of remote antiquity. Their succes- 
sion becomes a purely human genealogy, wherein the 
duration of each life is minutely recorded, as well as 
the age when the first son was born. These enor- 
mous figures, quite inconsistent with the physiolo- 
gical conditions of the terrestrial life of man, alone 
make these tables different from the familiar and 
regular records of the best attested genealogies. 

On the other hand, in the table of the descent of 
Qatn, borrowed from the Jehovist document, and in 
the few verses retained from this table relating to the 
descent of Sheth, these laboriously exact figures have 
not yet been introduced. Here the personages pre- 
serve a decidedly legendary physiognomy, not having 
been let down to the same dead level as in the 
Elohist document. Evidently the editor was not to 
the same extent concerned in giving them a strictly 
human character. As he had already done in the 
case of Qain, he lays great stress upon the allegorical 
signification of the appellations, and when we come 
to the name of Lemek, he introduces us to a cycle of 
heroic legends clustered about him; I had almost 
said myths, notwithstanding the sober reserve with 
which this term should be employed in Biblical nar- 
ratives; for even when undertaking the work of 
criticism, pure and simple, and using the same liberty 
in examining the Bible as any other ancient book, 
nothing is more at variance with the mythos, as seen 
among polytheistic nations, than the spirit of this 
Book. Properly speaking, these are legends, not 



VJ 



188 The Beginnings of History. 

myths, sometimes borrowed from popular tradition 
by the writers of the sacred books of Israel, espe- 
cially the book of Genesis ; and even when one has 
good reason to suppose that one of these legends may 
have had its origin in what was at first a genuine 
myth, it should be acknowledged that it was care- 
fully stripped of all that gave it this character before 
being admitted into the Bible. 

We have a striking example of this in the legends 
which the Jehovist writer has grouped about the 
name of the Qainite Lemek. The antagonism estab- 
lished between the two wives of that heroic person- 
age, with their two names, so evidently significant, 
of 'Adah, " beauty," and Qillah, " shadow, dimness," 
constitutes one of the rare instances when the mythic 
system of GoldziherQ seems to be grounded upon 
solid and incontestable fouudations. It seems to me 
impossible, in truth, to doubt the fact that the two 
women thus named could not have received these 
appellations, had not the popular imagination, long 
before the first establishment of monotheistic dogma 
in the family of Terah, conceived of them in the first 
place as two personifications of light and darkness, 
of day and night, fixed beside the " Strong Young 
Man," or the "Wild Man, the Devastator," for there 
is some doubt in choosing between these two inter- 
pretations of the name of Lemek, who in either case 
appears to us as an armed and warlike hero. But it 
should be carefully noted that though the Elohist 
editor, in all probability, accepted in this place two 

(!) Der Mythos bei den Hebrseern, p. 151. [Eng. Trans., 1877, 
p. 130. Tb.] 



The Shet kites and the Qainites. 189 

names associated with an ancient myth, and express- 
ing its fundamental idea, he took nothing further 
from it. Only their names suggest that ' Adah and 
Qillah must at first have possessed a mythical signifi- 
cance. But, save for these appellations, they exhibit 
absolutely no signs of such a character in the Sacred 
Book, where they appear simply and only as the two 
human wives of Lemek, an individual quite as human 
as they. The compiler even avoids giving any detail 
in regard to these two women, such as he records of 
their children, for fear of their again falling into the 
mythical position whence he had rescued them. The 
only thing he says in which they are concerned, and 
all that it comes within his scope to say, is that Le- 
mek had two wives, while his ancestors had never had 
but one apiece, and monogamy was also the invari- 
able practice of the blessed race represented by the 
family of Sheth. In order to give a more exact and 
individual character to these two women, in a story 
which had assumed the genealogical form, it was 
necessary to designate them by name. The inspired 
compiler naturally preferred adopting those supplied 
already by ancient national tradition to composing 
new ones. Therefore he inscribed in his table the 
two names which had been those of the personifica- 
tions of day and night, at the same time completely 
separating the two personages thus designated from 
their mythical attributes. 

To the mind of the Jehovist writer, as well as to 
the final collator of Genesis, who adopted his text, 
'Adah and Cillah have nothing whatever to do with 
the day and the night ; viewed beside their spouse, 



190 The Beginnings of History. 

Lemek, they furnish the first example of polygamy. 
The origin of this institution is thus carried back to 
the race of the accursed, and fixed on the eve of the 
Flood, when "all flesh had corrupted its way upon 
the earth." As Knobel has accurately stated,( x ) a 
direct condemnation of polygamy is here intended, 
just as the words of verse 24, chap, ii., give a divine 
sanction to monogamy. The Jewish Law never 
directly forbade polygamy, which was supposed to 
be authorized by the example of the patriarchs, ( 2 ) 
and which the kings finally carried to such an excess 
that the prophets confined themselves to endeavoring 
to moderate it, without going to the length of con- 
demning the principle.( 3 ) This is one of the points 
where Mosaism shows itself weakest ; in more than 
one place, the Thorah accepts the fact that a man 
may marry two wives as a perfectly legitimate one, 
and that even in parts of the same Jehovist redac- 
tion with Genesis ii. 24 and iv. 19,( 4 ) as well as Deu- 
teronomy.( 5 ) But, notwithstanding this tolerance, 
it is certain that a plurality of wives never became an 
universal custom among the mass of Israelites, who 
always remained essentially monogamic,( 6 ) and that 

(i) Die Genesis, 2d Ed., p. 64 [cf. 3d Ed., by Dillmann, 
p. 113. Tr.]. 

( 2 ) It is worthy of remark that the four wives of Ya'aqob, that 
one among the patriarchs whose polygamy is most pronounced, 
give us the precise number of legitimate wives allowed by the 
Laws of Manu (ix. 145), and afterwards sanctioned by Moham- 
med in the Qoran (iv. 3). 

( 3 ) This is also the case in Deuteron. xvii. 17. 
(*) Exod. xxi. 10; Levit. xviii. 18. 

(5) xxi. 15-17. 

( 6 ) See Munk, Palestine, p. 202. 



The Shethites and the Qainites. 191 

this immoral institution aroused at ail epochs con- 
scientious scruples. Thus in Deuteronomy,^) the 
majority of the regulations touching the relations of 
man and wife presuppose a single marriage, as a type 
of the moral and legal rule. 

It is also very evidently the intention to condemn, 
in attributing to it the same accursed origin, the san- 
guinary custom of personal vengeance, which is the 
scourge of the primitive social condition, and, as 
Ewald has justly remarked/ 2 ) is in direct opposition 
to the spirit of the Mosaic Law; — it is that he may 
stigmatize this usage with his condemnation that 
the Jehovist writer has inserted in his text the song 
of Lemek,( 3 ) the sole vestige of the existence of 
popular poetry dating back to an extreme anti- 
quity, which must have existed among the Terah- 
ites even prior to their migration toward Pales- 
tine.^) It was from this song that the words of the 
curse of Qain were taken (verse 15, chap. iv.).( 5 ) 

(!) xx. 7; xxiv. 5; xxv. 5 and 11. 

( 2 j Geschichte des Volkes Israel, 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 357. [N. 2. 
3d. Ed., I., p. 382, N. 3. Eng. Trans., I., p. 267, N. 3. Tr.] 

( 3 ) Genesis iv. 23 and 24. 

( 4 ) A likeness may be perceived between this fragment and the 
remains of ancient popular Chaldsean songs, in the collection of 
the Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. II.. pi. 16. One of these 
latter says : " Oh, that I may accomplish my vengeance, and 
render back to whomsoever has given me!" (luskun iqqimu — 
luttir va — mannu inandin.) [1. 53-55, b. Tr.] Another says: 
"As solid as an old kiln (which has been hardened by fire), 
resist thine enemies" (Kima tinuri — labiri — ana nukkurika marie). 
[1. 10-13, d. Tr.] 

( 5 ) Ewald, Jahrbiicher der biblischen Wissenschaft, vol. VI., p. 16 ; 
Bleek, Einleitung in das Alte Testament, p. 254 [1st Ed., 1860 ; 4th 



192 The Beginnings of History. 

Ewald( x ) was perfectly right in characterizing it as 
the oldest fragment contained in the Bible, and 
I am willing to regard it as the very oldest 
literary legacy which has been handed down to 
us from any Semitic people whatsoever. It 
breathes so decided a tone of primitive ferocity that 
one would naturally put it in the mouth of a wild 
man, a savage of the stone age, dancing around the 
corpse of his victim, while brandishing his silex- 
wood bludgeon, or the jaw-bone of the cave-bear, 
from which he has learned to fashion for his use 
a terrible weapon. ( 2 ) Aben-Ezra, Calvin, Drusius, 
Herder, Rosennmller, Delitzsch and Knobel under- 
stand it as a song of menace, instead of a song of 
triumph, translating thus : " I shall kill a man," etc. 
In spite of the authority of its upholders, this trans- 
lation does not strike me as correct ; with the Septua- 
gint, St. Jerome, and the majority of modern inter- 
preters, it seems evident to me that in this song 
Lemek relates past deeds, and that the true meaning 
is that which has been indicated by the illustrious 
De Sacy : ( 3 ) "I have slain a man because he wounded 

Ed., by Wellhausen, 1878, p. 77; Eng. Trans., 1869, L, p. 283. 
VJ Tk.] ; Tuch, Kommentar ilber die Genesis, p. 120 [2d Ed., by Ar- 
nold and Merx, p. 94. Tr.] ; Schrader, Studien, p. 128. 

(i) Geschichte des Volkes Israel, 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 357. [N. 2. 
3d Ed., I., p. 382, N. 3 ; Eng. Trans., I., p. 267, N. 3. Tr.] 

( 2 ) It is impossible for me to agree with Knobel when he fancies 
that he sees in this spirit of savage revenge a trait which specially 
characterizes the Chinese and the nations of Mongolian extraction 
{Die Genesis, 2d Ed., p. 66). 

( 3 ) Mem. de V Acad, des Inscriptions, vol. L., p. 370. 



The Shethites and the Qainites. 193 

me, and a child because he bruised rae/'f 1 ) But the 
curious part of it is that some of the Fathers of the 
Church should have been able to find an expression 
of remorse or penitence in this little poem.( 2 ) The 
song of Lemek has also given reins to the bizarre 
imagination of the Rabbins. St. Jerome( 3 ) relates 
that in his day there existed a tradition among the 
Jews, accepted, too, by certain of the Christians, to 
the effect that Lemek had killed Qain by accident. ( 4 ) 
The celebrated Raschi gives a full account of this 
incident, with many other connecting circumstances. 

(!) We will merely recall the way in which the Targumim have 
changed the text in translating: "I have not killed a man," 
and the interrogative rendering of the sentence in Saadiah's 
Arabic version : " Have I killed a man ? " 

( 2 ) St. John Chrysostom sees in Lamek a penitent criminal, 
publicly confessing his misdeed for the relief of his conscience 
(Homil. XX. in Genes.), and the obtaining of pardon (Homil. in 
Psalm, vi.). St. Basil (Epist. cclx. 5) interprets his words as sig- 
nifying the perpetration of two murders, and the consequent 
calling down upon him of a punishment far more terrible than 
Qain's, since he had sinned with more knowledge. He states the 
signification of the last verse to be, that as the guilt of Adam, 
after accumulating for seven generations, was to be followed by 
the Flood, so seventy-seven generations after his own time (comp. 
Luke iii. 28-38) He would appear Who should take away the sins 
of the world. 

The explanation given by Lightfoot (Decas. Chorogr. Marc. 
Praem., $ iv. ) should be relegated to the catalogue of curiosities, 
he supposing that Lemek expresses remorse for having by his 
example of polygamy brought upon the earth a greater destruc- 
tion and injury than Qain. 

( 3 ) Epist. zxvi. ad Damasum. 

( 4 ) Luther admits this, adding, however, that Lemek slew 
Qain purposely. [In Predigt. lib. I Buck Hosts, on iv. 23. Dif- 
ferently in Auslegung of same. Tr.] 

13 



\J 



194 The Beginnings of History. 

According to him, the occasion of the little poem was 
the refusal of Lemek's wives to enter into a partner- 
ship with him to bear the burden of his double 
murder, the victims of which had been persons of no 
less importance than his ancestor Qain and his son 
Tubal-Qain. Lemek, he says, was blind, and could 
not go about unless conducted by his son, who on one 
occasion fancied that he saw a wild beast creeping 
about under cover; he directed his father's arrow 
that way, and the shot struck Qain, wounding him 
mortally. When he found what he had done, Lemek, 
in the agitation of his first passion, turned upon 
Tubal-Qain and slew him. Thus it was that he 
struck a man and a child. ( l ) 

Such fancies, with which the ancient Bible text is 
embellished, are not worth dwelling upon ; they only 
serve to show to what extent the Jewish Rabbins, even 
the greatest of them, had lost the true meaning of 
portions of the most ancient of the Sacred Books. 
The true state of the case is that Lemek appears in 
the fourth chapter of Genesis as the prototype of 
savage revenge, as well as of polygamy. In his 
person, the race of Qain, begun in murder, comes to 
an end in murder more ferocious still. Condemna- 
tion of revenge and polygamy is the moral lesson of 
the text, and it is in this lesson that the Christian, 
who certainly could not acknowledge the savage song 

(!) It is strange that Goldziber did not call this legend to his 
aid when trying to prove, without any such indication in the 
text, that it was his own son whom Lemek, as a personification of 
the Sun, must have slain {Der Mythos bet den Hebrmern, p. 150 
[Eng. Trans., 1877, p. 129. Tb.]). 



The Shethites and the Qainites. 195 

of Lemek (*) as words of revelation, recognizes the 
inspiration which guided the sacred writer when he 
introduced into his book this old heroic and partly 
mythical tradition. Some of the modern exegetes, 
as Hess, Herder, Rosenmiiller, Ewald, Delitzsch, 
Knobel, seem to have reason on their side in endea- 
voring to trace a connection between the song of 
Lemek and the manufacture of metallic weapons, 
attributed to his son Tubal. In the terrible menace 
contained in the last verse of this song we have the 
expression of haughty confidence, which the posses- 
sion of these new instruments of warfare gives to the 
Qainite. Qain had been put out of the reach of the 
peril to which his murder exposed him by the ex- 
tension to him of a divine protection ; Lemek is 
sufficient unto himself to defend and shield himself, 
armed as he is. The man who might have under- 
taken to raise his hand against Qain would only 
have been exposed to a sevenfold vengeance; Lemek, 
thanks to the instruments of death which he wields, 
will be enabled to revenge himself seventy and seven 
times, for his power is now increased more than 
tenfold. 

It is time now to speak of the three sons of Lemek, 
who, in the Qainite genealogy, correspond to the three 
sons of N6ah in that of the Shethites, for they are 
also chiefs, fathers of races, as distinctly stated in the 

f 1 ) It is evident that if some Fathers of the Church have tor- 
tured the text that they might discover therein a Lemek repentant 
for his murders, it was that they might explain away the idea 
that so atrocious a proclamation of the principle of personal 
revenge should have been revealed and inspired from on high. 



196 The Beginnings of History. 

text. They are at the same time inventors of the 
useful arts of life. It is to the race of Qain that the 
Bible ascribes the invention of arts and industries. 
" The sons of the world are wiser than the children 
of light," (*) is a dominating idea of the 'whole 
Bible, and recurs in the Gospel. Material civil- 
ization already advanced, the refinements of life, 
the wealth of inventive creation in all its branches, 
but associated with impiety, luxury and cruelty, the 
melancholy heritage of the crime of their first an- 
cestor, such are the characteristics which the Sacred 
Book attributes to the descendants of Qain, as 
contrasted with the pure and simple life of the 
sons of Sheth, in whose history no facts are noted, 
save that at such a time " they began to invoke by 
the name of Yahveh"( 2 ) (Jehovist source), and the 
piety of Hanok, who "walked with God," and at 
the end of 365 years "was not, for Elohim 
had taken him"( 3 ) (Elohist source). Those arts, 
subsequently hallowed by being piously applied 
to the worship of the Eternal, were primarily 
invented for an utterly worldly and altogether ma- 
terial use by the gifted and ingenious race of the 
Accursed. 

The three names of the sons of Lemek, Yabal, 
Yubal and Tubal, are derived from the one root, 
yabal. Their formation offers us the first example 
of a mode of procedure dear to the Semite heart, 
in the invention of names for allegorical personages, 
and the building up of those Tholedoth, which are 

(!) Luke xvi. S. ( 2 ) Genesis iv. 26. ( 3 ) Genesis v. 24. 



The Shethites and the Qainites. 197 

their most customary methods of representing the 
principal phases of primitive history^ 1 ) 

We find this system most fully developed in the 
legendary genealogies of the Arabs. In them Qain 
is called Qabil, in order to give him a name in 
assonance with that of Habil ; in them we have the 
brother pairs of Shiddid and Shaddad, the two sons 
of 'Ad ; Malik and Milkan, the tAvo sons of Kinana ; 
in the same way that the two angels of death are 
called Munkar and Nekir, etc.( 2 ) The prophet Ye- 
hezqel resorts to the same system when he personifies 
(in his twenty-third chapter) the cities of Shomron 
and Yerushalatm by the two sisters Oholah and 
Oholibah. E,enan( 3 ) was correct in recognizing the 
system, as employed in the combination of the mythic 
Tholedoth of the Phoenicians, which Philo of By bios 
borrowed from the book of Sanchoniathon. Traces 
of it are found elsewhere, though not so abundantly, 
among nearly all nations, and especially among the 
ancient Hindus. ( 4 ) 

In addition to the three brothers thus denominated 

( 1 ) Primitive history, expressed by myths among the Aryans, 
is everywhere among the Semitic nations expressed by tables or 
patriarchal genealogies. See on this subject the ingenious views 
of Baron d' Eckstein: Journal Asiatique, Aout-Septembre, 1855, 
p. 212 et seq. ; Revue Archeologique, first series, vol. XII , p. 698 
et seq. 

( 2 ) See on this subject the excellent observations, especially 
rich in facts, made by Goldziher (Der Mythos bei den Hebrseern, 
p. 232 et seq.) [Eng. Trans., 1877, p. 347 et seq. Tr.]. 

( 3 ) Mem. de V Acad des Inscrip., new series, vol. XXIII., 2d 
Part, p. 261 

( 4 ) E. Burnouf, Inlrod. a I Histoire de Bouddhisme, 1st Ed., 
p. 360. 



198 The Beginnings of History. 

by different derivations from the same root, the frag- 
ment drawn by Genesis from the ancient Jehovist 
document adds a sister, Na'amah, who completes 
the list of the children of Lemek, but whose name 
simply is given, without anything further being told. 
The Jewish tradition of a later time has at this 
point been inclined to fill up a void in the Bible, and 
attribute to Na'amah a character analogous to her 
brothers' ; thus the Targum of Pseudo- Jonathan 
calls her "the mistress of mourners and singers." 
As an aid to the serious study of the Bible narrative, 
its sources and its character, this tradition has no 
more value than the ingenious, but unfounded, spec- 
ulations of those modern commentators who find in 
the name of Na'amah, " the charming," an expression 
of the progress of the art of dress and feminine 
coquetry in the Qainite civilization. 

In their essential character of inventors of the ma- 
terial arts, the three sons of Lemek find altogether 
worthy parallels in the mythic genealogies of Phoe- 
nicia, as made known to us through the fragments 
of Sanchoniathon. In the first of the cosmogonic 
pieces under his name/ 1 ) the first two human beings, 
Protogonos and Aion (Adam and Havath), begat 
Genos and Genea (Qen and Qenath), from whom 
descended three brothers, called Light, Fire and 
Flame, because "they found out how to produce 
fire by rubbing together two bits of wood, and 
then taught the use of this element."( 2 ) In another 

( x ) P. 14 et seq., ed. Orelli. See first appendix at the close of 
this volume, II. E. 

v 2 ) In general, the fictitious names given to inventors by the 



The Shethites and the Qainites. 199 

fragment, which we have already had occasion to 
dwell upon^ 1 ) we find, following close upon each 
other, at the beginning of all things, the brother 
pairs of Autochthon and Technites (Adam and Qen), 
inventors of brickmaking ; Agros and Agrotes (Sade 
and Ced), fathers of agriculturists and hunters ; fol- 
lowed by Amynos and Magos, "who taught people 
to live in villages and to raise flocks ."( 2 ) I said 
above that in the present state of our knowledge it is 
impossible to restore the original forms of these last 
two names, in which we can only guess at an asso- 
nance analogous to that existing between Yabal, 
Yubal, and Tubal. But the expression yxofiaq 
xal Trocfivat:, which the Greek text uses in reference 
to the invention of Amynos and Magos, is an exact 
translation of the terms ohel umiqneh, employed in 
the Bible, when speaking of the dwellings of the 
descendants of Yabal. ( 3 ) In the same way, Lemek, 
by the signification of his name and by the savage 
character which he displays in the legend that por- 
trays him, is a veritable synonym of Agrotes ; and 
the qualifying term Aletai, given to Agros and 
Agrotes in the Greek of the Phoenician History, 
marvellously accords with the physiognomy of the 

ancient legends were directly suggested by the object of the 
invention itself. See numerous examples in Pliny, Hist. Nat., 
VII., 57; comp. Maury [Qy., Delatre? Tr.], in the Athenseum 
frangais, 1854, p. 96 ; Histoire des Religions de la Grece, vol. I., p. 
231 et seq. 

(!) P. 160 et seq. 

( 2 ) P. 20 et seq., ed. Orelli. See first appendix at the end of 
this volume, II. F. 

(«») Genesis iv. 20. 



VJ 



200 The Beginnings of History. 

Qainite race in the Biblical narrative, whether we 
take a),7jTm as a simple Hellenic transcription of the 
Semitic JElim, "the strong, the powerful ones," or 
accept it in its Greek signification, "the wanderers," 
since this is the fate of Qatn and his race, according 
to the terms of the condemnation which was im- 
posed upon him after his crime^ 1 ) and is besides the 
meaning of 'Irad, the name of his grandson ; only 
the genealogy in Sanchoniathon does not end with 
Amynos and Magos, as does that of the Qalnites in 
the Bible with the three sons of Lemek. These two 
personages are followed by Misor and Sydyk, " the 
unfettered and the just/' as translated by Sanchonia- 
thon, but more correctly "the right and the just" 
(Mishor and Ciiduq), "who discovered the use of 
salt."( 2 ) Of Misdr was born Taautos (Taut), to whom 
we are indebted for letters ; and of Sydyk, the Cabiri 
or Corybantes, the fathers of navigation. ( 3 ) At this 

(!) Genesis iv. 14. 

( 2 ) In the Greek version of Philo of By bios, there certainly 
must be one of those misconceptions of which it is full and which 
produce the most singular combinations. 

( 3 ) It was this text which Movers (Die Phoenizier, vol. I., pp. 
651-655) took as his starting point when he proceeded to build up 
a complete system, according to which Sydyk must have been the 
Hephaistos of Phoenicia, and the Cabiri his sons, demiurges 
working under him, represented upon the monuments with ham- 
mer in hand, like the gods of the smithy. All this lacks accu- 
racy, and cannot be seriously justified either by means of 
literary or artistic proof; being in truth merely fanciful, 
resulting from a preconceived idea (see Fr. Lenormant, in 
Daremberg & Saglio's Dictionnaire des Antiquites, vol. I., p. 772 et 
seq.). The real Hephaistos of the Phoenicians is quite different 
from ryiiduq ; he is mentioned a little earlier in the Sanchoniathon 
fragments (p. 18, ed. Orelli ; see first appendix at the end of this 



The Bhethites and the Qainites. 201 

point the genealogy assumes a decidedly more mythi- 
cal coloring than at first ; the personages ceasing to 
be human heroes, as in former generations, and 
coming out distinctly as gods^ 1 ) In fact, Damasius 
speaks of Qiicluq also as a god, father of the eight 
Kabirim, who are represented upon a bronze coin of 
Berytus, bearing the head of the Emperor Helioga- 
balus,( 2 ) with a vessel near them, in the character of 
protectors of navigation. We are justified, however, 
in taking account here of this almost inextricable 
amalgamation of purely divine personifications and 
representatives of the primordial ages of humanity, 
which we find in all the heroic traditions of pagan 
peoples, and from which the inspired writers of the 

volume, II. F). This is Chusor, Hushor, known also to Damas- 
cius (De prim, princip., 125, p. 385, ed. Kopp ; see first appendix 
at the end of this volume, II. B), who calls him Chusoros 
Anoigeus, Hushor-Ptah. Sanchoniathon adds that he was also 
called Zeus-Meilichios, which is to say Malak, "the workman," 
and it is in this character, regarded as eponym and protecting 
deity of the city, that his head, with the attributes of the classic 
Vulcan, figures upon the obverse of the coins of Malaka in Spain 
(Gesenius, Monum. phcenic. , pi. 41, No. xix. ; Judas, Etude demon- 
strative de la langue phenicienne, pi. ii., No. 22; L. Miiller, Numis- 
matique de V ancienne Afrique, vol. III., p. 159; Alois Heiss, Mon- 
naies antiques de V Espagne, pi. xlv.), whose name signifies "the 
office, the workshop" (Schroeder, Die phoenizische Sprache, p. 172 
[N. 9]). 

(i) Ap. Phot., Biblioth., 242, p. 352, ed. Bekker; comp. San- 
choniathon, pp. 32 and 38, ed. Orelli. 

( 2 ) Eckhel, Doctr. num. vet., vol. III., p. 359; Mionnet, De- 
scrip, de Med. Antiques, vol. V., p. 347, No. 87 ; Dictionnaire des 
Antiquites, Daremberg & Saglio, vol. I., p. 773, fig. 918. In fact, 
the saying was that the sovereignty of Berytus was given to the 
Kabirim : Sanchoniathon, p. 38, ed. Orelli ; see the first appendix 
at the end of this volume, II. G. 



202 The Beginnings of History. 

Bible alone have been able to free their recitals. At 
least it may be granted remarkable that the qualifi- 
cation, ish gadcUq, "just man/' is precisely the epithet 
given to Noah in Genesis. Q This seems to afford 
some ground for the supposition that in the heroic 
legends of Kena'an a certain assimilation was estab- 
lished between "the Just One," the parent of a new 
human race, and the god Cudtiq or Cadiiq, and between 
the sons of this Just One and the Kabirim, something 
like the similarity we have already traced in some re- 
spects between the three sons of the first man and the 
Cabiri, or the Corybantes of Asia Minor and Samo- 
thracia. Anions the Phoenicians and Chaldeans there 
did not exist two parallel lines of primitive heroes, the 
one criminal, the other righteous, the one accursed, the 
other blessed; there was but one, and in this fact 
may be found the true application of the idea that 
some rationalistic critics have been mistakenly looking 
for in the Jehovist document of the Bible, where it 
could not exist, to the effect that N6ah was descended 
from Qain, — to use here the Hebrew names which 
alone we are absolutely certain of as to meaning. 
The originality of the Biblical narrative lies precisely 
in this distinction between these two antagonistic 
v» lines of the representatives of antediluvian humanity, 
a distinction proceeding necessarily from that moral 
reprobation, so energetic and lofty in the tone of its 
teaching, with which the crime of fratricide was de- 
nounced ; and it is in this sense alone that it can be 
granted that the two tables of Qatnites and Shethites 

(■) vi. 9; vii. 7. 



The Shethites and the Qainites. 203 

were formed by a systematic duplicating of a single 
primitive list, which may have been common to the 
Terahites and to other people of the same race, the 
names on this primitive table being carefully ar- 
ranged and modified in either line in such manner as 
to present in Hebrew a meaning in accordance with 
the characteristics attributed severally to the children 
of Qain and of Sheth. 

Some modern exegetes have deliberately made 
Yabal, Yubal and Tubal stand for a triad of divi- 
nities, adored by the ancestors of the Hebrews in a 
remote antiquity. Such is the system of Hasse( 1 ) and 
of Buttmann,( 2 ) which rests upon the onomastic simi- 
larities of a highly fantastic philology, as, for instance, 
Yubal= Apollo, Tubal-Qain— Volcanus=Telchin,( 3 ) 

( x ) Entdeckungen, vol. II., p. 37 et seq. 

(2) Mythologus, vol. L, pp. 163-170. 

( 3 ) We have a right to be suprised that such etymology could 
have been revived in our day, and indeed in an aggravated form, 
by George Smith [Chaldean Account of Genesis, pp. 56 and 296) 
[not in Rev. Ed., Sayce, pp. 50, 316. Tr.], whose philology, in 
consequence of a defect of early education, by no means rose to 
the height of his acute genius. The old god Fire of the Acca- 
dians, who plays so important a part in the hymns of the collection 
on Magic (on this god see Fr. Lenormant, Die Magie und Wahrsage- 
Jcunst der Ohaldseer, pp. 191-195) [Chald. Magic, pp. 185-189. Tr.], 
was called Gibil in the language of this people (Fr. Delitzsch, G. 
Smith's Chaldseische Genesis, p. 270), and this name is generally 
written bil-gi, in virtue of a law of reversal in the order of charac- 
ters in writing, of which we have a goodly number of examples 
(Fr. Lenormant, La langue primitive de la Chaldee, p. 421). The 
Bign which represents the syllable gi, phonetically, possesses also 
the ideographic value of "reed," the Assyrian name of which was 
qanu. Starting from this last fact, Smith has imagined for the 
name of the god Fire the reading Bilkan, which is, as already 



VJ 



204 The Beginnings of History. 

in the same way that Yahveh=Jovis. Such fancies 
need not be discussed. " Who knows," says Renan,^) 
with more reserve, " if Yubal and Tubal-Qain, who 
appear as inventors of mus'ic and of metallurgy, be 
not ancient divinities, one of whom carried an axe, the 
other a musical instrument, transformed by the Euhe- 
merism natural to the Semites into patriarchs and in- 
ventors?" Finally, Goldziher considers that the name 
of Yabal is identical with that of Habel,( 2 ) — which, 
philologically speaking, would be a difficult point to 
concede to him ; — and this name gives him the signi- 
iication of the rainy sky; Yabal forms with Tubal a 
duality which repeats that of Habel and Qain,( 3 ) per- 
sonifying as well the alternations of day and night, 
whence the too ingenious mythologist is led to the 
conclusion that, although the text hints at nothing of 
the sort, it was his son Yabal ( 4 ) whom Lemek slew in 
the original myth, he being the sun and Yabal the 
night ;( 5 ) furthermore, supposing that in the same 
myth there was an enmity between Yabal and Tubal, 
like that between the two first-born sons of Adam. 
It is a fact that the name of the sister of the three 

demonstrated by Friedrich Delitzsch, a simple impossibility and a 
genuine linguistic monstrosity ; and he believed that he had 
found in this name Bilkan the common origin of Tubal-Qain, on 
the one hand, and of Vulcan on the other. 

( x ) Mem. de V Acad, des Inscrijrt., new series, vol. XXIII., 2d 
Part, p. 263. 

( 2 ) Der Mythos bei den Hebrseern, p. 130 et seq. [Eng. Trans., 
1877, p. Ill et seq. Tr.] 

( 3 ) P. 151. [Eng. Trans., p. 130. Tr.] 

( 4 ) And not Tubal, which at least would have had in its favor 
the Rabbinical tradition lately referred to by us. 

( & ) P. 150. [Eng. Trans., p. 129. Tr.] 



The Shethites and the Qainites. 205 

sons of Lemek, Na'emah or Na'ama-h, was also that 
of a Phoenician goddess^ 1 ) whom the Greeks called 
Nemanoun,( 2 ) or Astronome ('Ashtar-No'ema), after- 
wards changed into Astronoe( 3 ) and Astynome.( 4 ) 
The Rabbins see a Venus( 5 ) in the Biblical ISTa'a- 
mah, a demon of the night and of nocturnal im- 
purity.^) They say that this sister of Tubal-Qain, 
whom some among them called the wife of 
Noah/ 7 ) was one of the four spouses( 8 ) of Sam- 

( x ) Movers, Die Phoenizier, vol. I., p. 636 et seq. ; Fr. Lenor- 
mant, Gazette Archeologique, 1878, p. 167. 

( 2 ) Plutarch, De Is. et Osir., 15. 

(3) Damasc. ap Phot. Biblioth., 242; p. 352, ed. Bekker. 

( 4 ) Jul. African, ap Cedren., vol. I., p. 28; Chron. Paschal., 
vol. I., p. 66. 

( 5 ) Fabricius, Cod. Pseudepigraph. Veter. Test., vol. I., p. 274 
et seq. 

( 6 ) Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, vol. II., p. 423. 

(7) Bereschith rabbah, sect. 23. 

( 8 ) These four wives of Sammael are, according to the Para- 
schah Bereschith (fol. 15, col. 4), Lilith, Na'amah, Igereth and 
Mahalath; according to the Touf haarec (fol. 19, col. 3), Lilith, 
on this occasion identical with Havah, Na'amah, Ebhen Mash- 
kith and Igereth, daughter of Mahalath. In the Yalqout hadasch 
(fol. 108, col. 3) and the Galante (fol. 7, col. 1) there are but two 
Qeliphoth or female demons, Mahalath and Lilith. Lilith is the 
female demon of night, well known to the prophets of Israel (Is. 
xxxiv. 14), the Succubus, who holds, with her male fellow, the 
Lil or Incubus, an important place in Chaldaic demonology (Fr. 
Lenormant, Die Magie und Wahrsagehunst der Chaldseer, p. 40 \_Clial- 
dsean Magic, Londo ■., 1877, p. 38. Tk.]) ; she became the nucleus 
of an immensely long rabbinical legend, according to which she 
makes her way to Adam and unites herself with him (Buxtorf, 
Lexicon Talmudicum, p. 1140; Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, 
vol. II., p. 413 et seq. : Genesius, Commentar iiber den Jesaia, vol. 
II., p. 916 et seq.). Mahalath is the daughter of Yishmael, wife 
of 'Esav, mentioned in Genesis xxviii. 9. As for Igereth, she is 



\J 



206 The Beginnings of History. 

mael,^) the demon of the planet Mars, or, as he was 
otherwise called, Shomron,( 2 )and mother of the demon 
of voluptuousness, Ashmedai',( 3 ) and of many other de- 
mons. ( 4 ) Finally, they add that she dwelt at Tyre, 
where the sacred island is called Asteria, the abode of 
Astronome or Astynome, according to the Chronicon 
Paschale. ( 5 ) It is known that the Rabbins identified 
the demon Sammael with 'Esav,( 6 ) brother of Ya'aqob, 

said to be, as has been already stated, the daughter of Mahalath 
(Eisenmenger, vol. II., p. 417). 

(*) On the demon Sammael, who is an ancient divinity of the 
planet Mars, see Selden, De diis Syris, syntagm. II., 6, p. 232 ; 
Buxtorf, Lexic. Talmud., p. 1495; Movers, Die Phoenizier, vol. I., 
p. 224; Finzi, Ricerche per lo studio dclV antichitd, assira, p. 531. 
He is made likewise a demon of death, completing thus his 
identity with a form of Chaldeo- Assyrian Nergal (on the char- 
acter of Nergal. as god of death and the original signification of 
his name, see Friedr. Delitzsch, G. Smith's Chaldscische Genesis, pp. 
274-276). His name may possibly be one with that of the god 
Shamela, one of the co-regents of Asshur, in the city to which 
this great Assyrian god gave his name (Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. 
Asia, vol. III., pi. 66, obv., 1. 1, e). This Shamela is, in fact, 
manifestly identical with the Shemal, chief of the genii, who occu- 
pied the front rank in the pagan worship of Hauran, even poste- 
riorly to Islamism (Mohammed ben Ishaq en-Nediin, in Chwolsohn, 
Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, vol. II., pp. 24, 26, 29, 30, 35), and 
whom Chwolsohn correctly compares with Sammael (Ibid., vol. II., 
pp. 217-223). This name seems to characterize the god as him of 
the left ?ide, that is to say of the North. 

( a ) Eisenmenger, vol. II., p. 416. 

(3) Ibid, ( 4 ) Paraschah Bereschith, fol. 15. 

( 5 ) Movers, Die Phoenizier, vol. I., p. 637. 

( 6 ) Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, vol. I., pp. 624, 647 
and 825; Movers, Die Phoenizier, vol. L, p. 397; Fr. Lenormant, 
Essai de Commentaire des Fragments de Berose, p. 128. 

Some assimilate the four female demons, wives of Sammael, 
with the four wives of 'Esav: Eisenmenger, vol. II., p. 416. 



The Bhethites and the Qainites. 207 

whom they go so far as to call "a strange god."( ! ) 
There are reasons for supposing that at a certain 
epoch an analogous assimilation had been made be- 
tween Tubal and the same demon, and this would 
explain the transformation of Tubal in the hands of 
Josephus,( 2 ) when from the smith of the Bible he 
becomes a warlike and armed hero. With Tubal 
regarded in this light, the two children of Lemek 
and Qillah resemble such another pair as Sammael 
and Na'emah, Nergal and Ishtar, Melqarth and 'Ash- 
tarth, Ares and Aphrodite. But is all this actually 
conformable to the primitive shape of the tradition 
preserved in Genesis ? I have my strong doubts on 
the subject, and I believe it to be much more likely 
a product of that excessive syncretism which seemed 
to take strong hold on Jewish doctors after a certain 
period, and was suggested by the artificial resemblance 
between the names of Na'ama-h, daughter of Lemek, 
and the goddess ISTa'amah or No'ema-. 

One thing is certain, that none of the names, Yabal, 
Yubal and Tubal, lend themselves to a comparison 
of the same nature that Na'amah suggests with the 
known appellation of any god of Semitic polythe- 
ism^ 3 ) These names continue to be absolutely iso- 

( x ) Yalqout rouberi gadol, fol. 62, col. 2. 

( 2 ) Antiq. Jud., L, 2, 2. 

( 3 ) A Mauritania!! god Juba (Mimic. Felix, Octavian,, p. 351, ed. 
Herald. ; Lactant., Divin. Instit., I., 15 ; Isidor. Hispal., Orig., viii., 
11), whose name Movers (Die Phoenizier, vol. I., p. 537 et seq.) 
and Schroeder (Die Phoenizische Sprache, p. 99) restore as Yuba'al, 
is indeed cited. But this name has nothing in common with the 
Yubal of Genesis. On the contrary, Christian authors who mention 
the god Juba, quote hiai as being one of the most positive examples 



VJ 



208 The Beginnings of History. 

lated, peculiar to the Biblical text, by whose authors 
they appear to have been artificially composed, as 
Knobel has correctly remarked^ 1 ) no mythological 
correspondents are found for them among any of the 
Euphratic or Syro -Arabic nations, and the same 
thing is true of the four names of Patriarchs of the 
Shethite line, in whom Ewald( 2 ) fancies that he 
has discovered the four gods of ancient Hebrew 
paganism. Out of Mahalalel he makes a sort of 
Apollo; he transforms Yered into a god of the 



of deified man, and say that he was King Juba, the contemporary 
of Augustus. Lactantius even compares his apotheosis with that 
of the Roman Emperors. Tertullian certifies to the custom among 
the Moors of adoring even their living kings as gods (Apolog. 24). 
St. Cyprian (De idol, vanit., 2) does the same, and both were com- 
petent witnesses. This was an old custom of the Libyan nations, 
and Nicolas of Damascus (ap Stob. Florileg., cxxiii. 12 ; Nicol. 
Damasc, Fragm. 141, in C. Miiller, Fragm. Historic. Grsec, vol. 
III., p. 463) mentions a curiously barbarous form among the 
Panebes. He says : "On the death of their kings they bury their 
bodies, first cutting off the head, which they enframe in gold and 
offer worship to it in a temple" (comp. what Herodotus says of 
the customs of the Issedones in Asiatic Scythia, IV., 26). 

In any case, there is no just ground for comparing this Juba as 
Movers does (Die Phoenizier, vol. I., p. 536) with Iolaos of Car- 
thage (Polyb., VII., 9, 2; see Maury in Guigniaut, Religions de 
V Antiquite, vol. II., p. 1040), son of Hercules-Melqarth and Certha 
(Apollodor., II., 7, 8), and for seeing in Iolaos a Yuba'al. Indeed 
the true indigenous form of this name of the divine son of the Car- 
thaginian Triad was Y61, "the first born," and we have this in 
the Punic inscriptions (Fr. Lenormant, Gazette Archeologique, 
1876, p. 127). 

(!) Die Genesis, 2d Ed., p. 65. [3d Ed., by Dillmann, p. 114. 
Tr.] 

( 2 ) Geschichte des Volkes Israels, 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 356 et seq. 
[3d Ed , I., pp. 381, 383 ; Eng. Trans., I., pp. 265-267. Tr.] 



The Shethites and the Qainites. 209 

waters, Handk into the sun of the new year, and 
Methushelah into Mars. As a general thing, such 
a creation of gods should not be accepted without 
due consideration, since it is sure to be a result 
of the exegetical imagination, more or less plau- 
sible, inasmuch as they cannot be evolved, ex- 
cept by an entirely subjective operation of the 
mind, out of names susceptible of an utterly different 
interpretation, and without even the beginning of a 
proof to justify the hypotheses. Moreover, if Yabal, 
Yubal and Tubal had originally been names of 
deities, it must be admitted that they were cu- 
riously stripped of any such character on being 
received into the genealogy of Genesis. The Biblical 
text presents them as simple men, and persists in thus 
defining them. Nothing of supernatural is in their 
origin or character ; they are human beings, mortals ; 
they do not even belong to the chosen and blessed 
race. The manifest intention of the writer of the 
Jehovist document, and of the final compiler, who 
adopted this fragment of his, is to present as ordi- 
nary men, and nothing more, those inventors of the 
arts of whom the neighboring nations, and in fact 
nearly all the peoples of antiquity, made gods and 
demigods, in order that the Israelites should be 
warned against the tendency to pay them divine 
honors. The -inspired writer recognizes in this ten- 
dency one of the most insidious allurements to poly- 
theistic practices, and accordingly reacts energetically 
against it. Hence the coloring under which he pre- 
sents the ancient national traditions. 

Ewald presents a second theory in connection 
14 



210 The Beginnings of History. 

with the sons of Lemek.Q He sees in them the 
representatives and ancestral types of castes analo- 
gous to those of Brahmanic India, Yabal represent- 
ing the Vai'eyas, Yubal the Brahmans and Tubal the 
Kchatriyas. The illustrious Semitic scholar of Got- 
tingen at least need not have gone so far in search of 
his points of comparison, and would have rendered 
his theory a little less improbable by citing those 
castes, traces of which may be discerned at Babylon,( 2 ) 
or those whose existence and organization among the 
Sabseans of Southern Arabia have been most accu- 



(i) Geschichte des Volkes Jsrael, 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 864. [3d Ed., 
I., p. 390 ; Eng. Trans., I., pp. 272, 273. Tr.] 

( 2 ) Diodorus of Sicily (II., 29) attributes this close and rigorous 
caste characteristic to the Chaldeans, considered simply as a sacer- 
dotal corporation. Taking all classic testimony into consideration, 
Oppert (article Babylonians, in the 3d ed. of Encyclopedic du xix. 
Steele) does not hesitate to admit that the rule of caste existed 
in Babylon in all its rigor, while George Rawlinson [The Five 
Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World, IVth monarchy, 
chapter vi. [4th Ed., vol. III., p. 13. Tr.]) thinks it rather 
a question of class than of ca.ste. The enumeration contained 
in the difficult passage in Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. 
III., pi. 41, col. 1, 1. 31-33, has all the characteristics of a 
formula which mentions the divers castes of the nation. How- 
ever, it is not exact to say, as has been done (Oppert and Menant, 
Documents juridiques de V Assyrie et de la Chaldee, p. 75), that 
there exists in the cuneiform writing a sign expressing the 
idea of "caste." The terms before which the ideogram in ques- 
tion is prefixed, by way of determinative, in the table of Cuneif. 
Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. II., pi. 31, No. 5, have too restricted a 
signification to be regarded as names of castes ; they are names of 
professions. In reality, there are three determinatives in the 
writing, all three being used in the list which we have just cited, 
one giving the general idea of " man," one the titles of functions, 
the third the titles of professions. 



The Shethltes and the Qainites. 211 

rately described to us by classic writers^ 1 ) But this 
institution, which may with good reason be consid- 
ered as essentially Kushite, ( 2 ) never existed in its 
vigor among the nations that are, properly speaking, 
Semitic, particularly the Hebrews. It will not, there- 
fore, be possible to allow it a place among the ancient 
records collected in Genesis. Moreover, in the defi- 
nitions given of their occupations and inventions by 
the Biblical text, the three sons of Lemek do not 
represent three different modes of life ; there are but 
two, that of the children of l Adah and that of the son 
of Cillah. As Knobel has justly remarked, ( 3 ) Yabal 
and Yubal form a closely united group ; the inven- 
tion of music is regarded by the sacred author as 
connected with the pastoral life, on the same prin- 
ciple as, among the Greeks, Pan, the pastoral deity 
par excellence, is the inventor of the syrinx ; Hermes, 
who created the lyre, is Criophoros, "ram-bearer/ 7 like 
a herdsman ] Nomios, or " shepherd ; " Epimelios, or 

(i) StrabV, XVI., p. 782. 

( 2 ) See d'Eckstein, in the Athenaeum francais of April 22, 1854 ; 
Kenan, Histoire des langues Semitiques, 1st Ed., p. 300 [4th Ed., p. 
818. Tr.] ; Fr. Lenormant, Manuel tThistoire ancienne de V Orient, 
3d Ed., vol. III., p. 298. The Aryans of India who adopted the 
rule of caste undoubtedly borrowed it from the populations of 
Kushite blood, who had preceded them in the basins of the Indus 
and Ganges, and whom they subjected to their authority. The 
same institution appears in the kingdom of the Narikas (not 
Aryans), on the Malabar coast, who seem likewise to have been 
Kushites, and whose constitution offers some striking analogies 
with that of the Sabseans, as pointed out by Lassen (Indische Alter- 
thumshmde, vol. II., p. 580 [2d Ed., 1874, p. 584 et seq. Tr ]). 

(3) Die Genesis, 2d Ed., p. 65. [3d Ed., by Dillmann, p. 113. 
Tr.] 



VJ 



212 The Beginnings of History. 

"he who watches over the sheep ;"( l ) and Apollo 
himself, the god whose principal attribute is the lyre, 
reckons among his surnames Nomios, Carneios and 
a whole series of analogues, showing him to be a 
shepherd -god, the part which he played on earth in 
the service of Admetus.( 2 ) Moreover, without wan- 
dering off into comparisons with the mythology of 
the people of other races, the alliance of the cultiva- 
tion of music with the pastoral life, in the customs of 
the ancient Hebrews, is attested by the history of 
David, who, in his youth, unites the two qualities 
of shepherd and skilled player on the kinnor. 

There is still a last theory, which views in the sons 
of Lemek ethnic personifications, or at least types of 
the great human families, as are the sons of Noah. 
This is KnobePs theory,( 3 ) and though I cannot agree 
with this scholar when he makes out the Qainites to 
be the Chinese and Mongolian nations, since the geo- 
graphical horizon of the traditions in Genesis does 
not include them, I do not hesitate to admit that at 
bottom his way of regarding the subject is the correct 
one. Ethnic personifications stand foremost in the 
Biblical narratives of the beginning of things, and 
this is a consequence of the peculiar genius of the 
people among whom these narratives grew up. Baron 
d' Eckstein remarks admirably ( 4 ) in this connection : 

(i) See Preller, Griechische Mythologie, 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 307 
et seq. 

( 2 ) Preller, same work, vol. I., p. 207 et seq. 

( 3 ) Die Genesis, 2d Ed., p. 53 et seq. [See, on the other hand, 
3d Ed., by Dillmann, p. 99 et seq. Tr.] 

( 4 ) Questions relatives aux Antiquites des Peuples Semitiques (Paris, 
1856).. p. 51. 



The Shethites and the Qainites. 213 

" Instead of gods, the Semites place men at the head 
of their genealogies : here we do not meet with 
heroes, sons of gods or demigods, offshoots of the 
One God in so many divine manifestations : here are 
Shepherd-Patriarchs, leaders of pastoral tribes, and 
this pure Semitic type is used to describe all the out- 
lying human kind. The patriarchs of this character 
should always be taken collectively, as standing for 
their actual family, the collateral branches of their 
kindred, or even the tribe as a whole, including ser- 
vants and slaves. They figure in a double sense, as a 
simple unit and as a collective unit ; this genealogical 
method is fixed among the Hebrews and Arabs." 

I feel with Fresnel^ 1 ) that it would be suggestive 
to establish an analogy between the shepherd descend- 
ants of the sons of 'Adah in Genesis iv. 20 and 21 
and the impious and more than half mythical people 
of ' Ad, supposed in the Arab traditions to be the first 
inhabitants of Yemen. ( 2 ) Destroyed by a divine 
chastisement, recalling that of the cities of Pentapolis 
in Genesis xix., the people of ' Ad are represented in 
the legend as a nation of giants, of the same nature 
as those mentioned in Genesis vi. 4. Exactly on 
the same principle, the ancestors of Amynos and 
Magos, in the Phoenician cosmogonies, whose analogy 

(i) Journal Asiatique, Aout, 1838, p. 220. 

( 2 ) Hamza, Annal, ed. Gottwaldt, pp. 123 and 128 ; Kazwini, 
vol. II., p. 43; Aboulfeda, Hist, anteislam, ed. Fleischer, pp. 16, 
18, 20 and 178; D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, words Ad trnd 
Houd; Pococke, Spec. Hist. Arab., p. 35 et seq. ; Caussin de Per- 
ceval, Essai sur Vhistoire des Arabes, vol. I., p. 11 et seq. ; Fr. Le- 
normant, Manuel tfhistoire ancienne de T Orient, 3d Ed., vol. III., 
p. 256 et seq. 



214 The Beginnings of History. 

with the sons of Lemek we have proved beyond 
question, are represented as Titans,( T ) and the sons 
of Light, Fire and Flame, the discoverers of fire, 
offspring of Genos and Genea (Qen and Q&nath), 
as giants whose names have been transmitted to the 
mountains. ( 2 ) 

Most certain of all, to my thinking, is the com- 
parison, or, more properly speaking, the absolute 
identification which Tuch,( 3 ) Baron d'Eckstein,( 4 ) 
Renan,( 5 ) and W. A. Wright, ( 6 ) establish between 
" Tubal the smith, forger of every instrument of 
iron and of brass," and the people of Tubal, who 
sold at Tyre " slaves, and utensils of brass, in ex- 
change for its merchandise."! 7 ) It is true that the 
people of Tubal, in other words the Tibarites, and the 
Chalybes,( 8 ) celebrated for their work in metals far 
back in remote antiquity, are mentioned in Genesis 
x. 2, among the sons of Yapheth. But this is not 
the only time that Genesis gives us the same ethnic 
name in two distinct genealogies, to explain the 
various race strata which have succeeded one an- 

(!) Sanchoniath., p. 22, ed. Orelli. 

( 2 ) Sanchoniath. , p. 16, ed. Orelli. 

( 3 ) Kommentar ilber die Genesis, p. 118 et seq. [2d Ed., by 
v ' Arnold and Merx, p. 93. Tr.] 

( 4 ) Atheneeum francais, 19 Aout, 1854, p. 775. 

( 5 ) Histoire des langues Semitiques, 1st Ed., p. 460. [4th Ed., 
p. 487. Tr.] 

( 6 ) In Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, vol. III., p. 1574 [Am. 
Ed., 1871, IV., p. 8327. Tr.] ; see also Fr. Lenormant, Les pre- 
mieres civilisations, vol. I., p. 133. 

( 7 ) Ezek. xxvii. 13. 

( 8 ) Knobel, Die Vcelkertafel der Genesis, p. 109 et seq. ; Fr. Le- 
normant, Les premieres civilisations, vol. I., p. 122 et seq. 



The Shethites and the Qainites. 215 

other in the formation of the same people ; it will 
suffice to mention Sheba, of the blood of Ham,^) 
and Sheba, son of Yaqtan, in the descent of Sh£m.( 2 ) 
Moreover, the genealogy of the Qainites in the fourth 
chapter of Genesis and the ethnographic table in 
chapter x. do not proceed from the same source ; the 
one being taken from the Jehovist, the other from 
the Elohist, document. Hence it is entirely possible 
that a divergence may have existed in these two 
documents regarding the origin assigned to Tubal. 

Here, however, we can only indicate this hypo- 
thesis briefly, but will trace it out more in detail 
in the twelfth chapter. In that we shall study 
the question as to the limitations of the universality 
of the Flood, as understood by the authors of the 
documents drawn upon in compiling Genesis, and 
likewise the vieAv of its final editor, and we believe 
that we shall be able to prove on solid grounds that 
there are two great families of nations, perfectly well 
known to the Hebrews, with whom they came fre- 
quently into contact, who were always systematically 
excluded from the descent of the three sons of Noah, 
like the negroes, known also to the Hebrews, and 
that because in their veins flowed the blood of Qain. 
These are, on the one hand, the most ancient layer 
of the population of Palestine, anterior to the 
Kena'anites, of whom the Bene-Yisrael found some 
remains, always described in the Bible narrative 
under legendary colors, most frequently as giants — 
Emim, Rephalm, Zamzummim, Zuzim, 'Anaqiin, 

(!) Genesis x. 7. ( 2 ) Genesis x. 28. 



VJ 



216 The Beginnings of History. 

and, as I think, the people of 'Amaleq. On the 
other hand, we have the metallurgic nations, of a 
very ancient civilization, speaking agglutinative 
idioms, like the Accadians, the Elamites and the 
Proto-Medes, to whom we are accustomed to give 
the more or less exact name of Turanians of Western 
Asia.^) These two great national branches, these 
two ethnic families, are the ones which appear to me 
to be represented in the fourth chapter of Genesis by 
the division of the children of Lemek into the sons 
of ' Adah and Qillah, the bright one and the dark one, 
a maternal distinction, which seems to imply that of 
the Northern and Southern races. 

If this theory were accepted, it would follow that 
the ethnic name of Tubal, traced back to the root 
ydbal, in order to give it a Hebrew meaning, must 
have been the type upon which the names of the two 
remaining sons of Lemek were artificially formed, 
they being in like manner drawn from the same root 
ydbal, but in such a way that the appellation of the 
shepherd Yabal expressed the abundant fruitfulness 
of the flocks, while that of the musician Yubal rep- 
resented the joyous sound (yub£l) of the instruments 
of music which he is said to have invented. 

In any case, the very nature and extent of the 
observations which the antediluvian genealogies of 
the Jehovist document, inserted in the fourth chapter 
of Genesis, suggest to us by the details which they 
record in regard to the personages mentioned therein, 

( x ) See Fr. Lenormant, Les premieres civilisations, vol. I., p. 
132 et seq. 



The Shethites and the Qainites. 217 

justify Philippe Berger'sQ well-expressed statement. 
According to this scholar, the Tholedoth of Jehovist 
origin present the ancient Hebrew tradition of the 
beginnings under a much more ancient form than do 
those of Elohist origin. Herein they retain a more 
strictly legendary character, not having been so rigor- 
ously despoiled of every trace of mythical suggestion^ 
everything outside of the record of a dry and exact 
human genealogy. This is the very conclusion which 
we have ourselves reached, and in which we shall be 
confirmed as our studies progress* 

( x ) Article Genealogies, in the Protestant Encyclopedie de sciences 
religieuses. 



VJ 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE TEN ANTEDILUVIAN PATKIARCHS. 

After having examined the facts ascribed to the 
antediluvian period by the Jehovist document, and 
studied the two genealogical tables of Shetbites and 
Qainites in their reciprocal relations, it remains to us 
to investigate the principle on which the list of patri- 
archs, from generation to generation, beginning with 
Sheth and ending with Noah, was constructed. With 
this new part of our research, we shall find ourselves 
confronted with an imposing array of concordant tes- 
timony, gathered in from the four quarters of the 
earth, which leaves no room for doubt iu regard to 
the common ground of the ancient narratives touch- 
ing the primal days of man among all the great civil- 
ized nations of the old world. The agreement as to 
the number of antediluvian patriarchs with the Bible 
statement in the traditions of nations most diverse 
one from another, is manifested in a strikiug way. 
They are ten in the story of Genesis, and with a 
strange persistence this number ten is reproduced in 
the legends of a very great number of nations, when 
dealing with their primitive ancestors, yet shrouded 
in the mist of fable. To whatever epoch they trace 
back these ancestors, whether before or after the 
218 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 219 

deluge, whether the mythic or historic side predomi- 
nate in their physiognomy, they invariably offer this 
sacramental number ten.Q 

The names of the ten antediluvian kings men- 
tioned in the Chaldaic tradition have been transmitted 
to us through the fragments of Berossus,( 2 ) but un- 
fortunately in a form much altered by successive 
copyists of the text. We will give the table of their 
designations parallel to that of the corresponding 
patriarchs in Genesis. ( 3 ) 

( J ) Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 351. 
[3d Ed., I., p. 375 et seq. ; Eng. Trans., I., p. 262 et seq. Tr.] 

( 2 ) Fragments 9, 10, 11, of my edition. 

( 3 ) I have judged it expedient to furnish a commentary upon 
this table in some rather extended notes, which break in upon the 
continuity of the text during several pages. The various details 
contained in these notes seemed to me too important to be over- 
looked, but it was not easy to introduce them in any other way 
in the natural course of the chapter. 



220 The Beginnings of History. 



\j 



ANTEDILUVIAN PATRIARCHS 


ANTEDILUVIAN KINGS 


OF THE BIBLE. 


OF THE CHALDAIC TRADITION. 




Facts relat- 
ed in regard 
to them. 


NAMES. 


Facts re- 


Names. 


In the Frag- 
ments of 
Berossus. 


Corrected 
forms. (!) 


Origi- 
nal 
forms. 


lated in 

regard to 

them. 








1. Adam 




1. Aloros. 


Adoros. 


Adiu- 


1st divine 


(man). 








ru. 


revela- 
tion.^) 


2. Sh<2th 




2. Alapa- 






2d divine 


(founda- 




ros. 






revela- 


tion).^) 










tion. 


■3. Enosh 


Men then 


3. Almelon 








(man). 


began to 
invoke by 
the name 


or 

Amillaros. 








4. Qenan 


of Yahveh. 


4. Amme- 




Ham- 


3d divine 


(creature). 




non. 




manu. 


revela- 
tion. 


5. Mahalal'el 




5. Amega- 






4th divine 


(Praise of 




laros or 






revela- 


God).(*) 




Megala- 

ros.( 5 ) 






tion. 


6. Yered 




6. Daonos 






Surnam- 


(descent.)(6) 




or 

Daos.(7) 






ed "shep- 
herd." 
5thdivine 
revelat'n. 


7. Hanok 


He walks 


7. Edoran- 






6th and 


(Initia- 


in the ways 


chos or 






last di- 


tor).^) 


of the Eter- 


Evedores- 






vine rev- 




nal, and is 


chos. 






elation. 




translated 










8. Methushe- 


to heaven. 


8. Amem- 








lah (man 




phsinos. 








with the 












dart). (9) 












9. Lemek 




9. Otiartes 


Obartes. 


Ubar- 




(strong 




or 




atutu. 




young 




Ardates. 








man).( 10 ) 












10. Noah (con- 


In his time 


10. Xisu- 




Hasis- 


In his 


solation) ( n ) 


the Del- 


thros or 




atra. 


time the 




uge. 


Sisithros. 






Deluge. 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 221 

NOTES ON THE PRECEDING TABLE. 

( x ) We can correct only a very small proportion of the names, 
being those whose original forms have been so far discovered in 
the cuneiform documents. 

( 2 ) These successive divine revelations are recorded in the 
Chaldaic legend as made by the gods to the creatures, half man, 
half fish, who came out of the Erythraean Sea. In regard to the 
order in which they were supposed to come, and the reigns in 
which they occurred, see Fr. Lenormant, Essai de Commentaire des 
Fragments de Berose, pp. 242-251, and especially the second ap- 
pendix at the end of the present volume. 

( 3 ) This interpretation is philologically the most probable in 
Hebrew, and is not at variance with the allusive etymology given 
in Genesis iv. 25. 

A whole series of legends, some traces of which are found in 
Josephus (Antiq. jud. , I., 2, 8), have grouped themselves about the 
name of the patriarch Sheth. They make him the inventor of 
letters and science (Fabricius, Codex pseudepigraph. Veteris Testa- 
menti, I., p. 146), a tradition accepted by the mediaeval Greeks 
(Johann. Antioch, frag. 2 in C. Miiller, Fragm. historic, grsec., vol. 
IV., p. 540; Mich. Glycas, Anna!., p. 121, edit, of Paris ; Tzetz , 
Chiliad., V., 26), and a rabbinical tradition locates his grave at 
Arbela (Schindler, Pentaglot., col. 144). Sir Henry Rawlinson 
{Journal Royal Asiatic Society, new series, vol. I., 1st Part, p. 195 ; 
comp. Fr. Lenormant, Essai de Commentaire des Fragments de 
Berose, pp. 270-275) has proved that all these fables are the 
result of an assimilation made by certain sectaries of the first 
Christian centuries between the patriarch called the son of Adam 
in the Bible and one of the great divinities of the religions of 
Semitic Asia. 

The Assyrian documents in fact mention a god Shita, the seat 
of -whose worship was the city of Bit-Adar ( Cuneif. Inscr. of West. 
Asia, vol. III., pi. 66, rev., 1. 31, e), near Arbail or Arbela. On 
the other hand, the Egyptian monuments introduce us to Set or 
Sutekh (a stronger and longer form), as the great deity of the 
Khetas at the north of Syria, and also of the Asiatic shepherds, 
who at a certain epoch invaded the valley of the Nile and ruled 
over Egypt. As a Syrian god, Set is clearly assimilated with 
Ba'al, but, over and above this, he had been from time immemo- 



\J 



222 The Beginnings of History. 

rial the national god of the half-Semitic populations of the Delta, 
and later became the adversary of Osiris in Egyptian mythology : 
De Rouge, in Memoires de V Academie des Inscriptions, new series, 
vol. XXV., 2d Part, p. 232 et seq. See also the works of Pleyte 
on La Religion des Pre- Israelites, and of Ed. Meyer, on Set-Typhon ; 
finally, H. G. Tomkins, Studies on the Times of Abraham, pp. 145- 
151. 

In the form under which it occurs in the hieroglyphic text, the 
name of Set is purely Egyptian, with a significance in that lan- 
guage. I will here give the answer of my learned friend G. Mas- 
pero to a question addressed to him by myself in regard to the 
possibility of finding for this name a meaning analogous to that 
of the Biblical Sheth. " The determinative of ' stone' is accounted 
for by the variations of the name of the god Set ; it is in the way 
of a play on words. The form ST is the phonetic character for 
the designation of ' the foreign country,' < the mountain,' as 
well as for the name of the god Set. The expression of this god's 
name by means of two phonetic signs, ST, and the determinative 
of stone, is a most natural orthography, as Set was the god of 
foreign lands and of the desert, this method of writing his name 
recalling his origin and his attributes. The hypothesis of a com- 
parison with Sheth might be barely possible. ST might be derived 
from tu, ' to place, to rear.' But I entertain grammatical 
objections to this view of the matter. The factor of iu gives 
us the pronunciation stu stou, which might strictly be car- 
ried on to the form Sutkhu, pronounced Stukhu(t), but not 
to ST. The modern form of the name is J,yd, Sit ; my unpub- 
lished researches on vocalization have led me to the original vocali- 
zation Siti, for the old form, differing from the royal name Sitiy, 
which signifies ' the Setian,' in the position of the accent which 
in Siti is placed on Si, and in Sitiy on y ; whence the weakening 
of the vowel in Si and the probable pronunciation Siti, Sete, 
Zeduatc, or rather 2£0u><7«c." 

Admitting these learned and valuable observations, there remains 
for the name of Seth the possibility of a fact analogous to that which 
we are able to prove conclusively in regard to the name.of Hathor. 
She likewise appears to have been originally a national divinity of 
the half-Semitic populations of the Delta, especially of the 'Ami 
(De Rouge, Mem. de V Acad, des Inscrip., new series, vol. XXV., 2d 
Part, p. 230 et seq.), the 'Anamim of Genesis (x., 13), and there 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 223 

are strong reasons for supposing the name was primitively identical 
with that of the Syrian 'Ashthar or 'Athar (Fr. Lenormant, Lettrea 
Assyriologiqucs, vol. II., p. 58 et seq.). By leaving it almost pre- 
cisely its original sound, a pure Egyptian name has been made of 
it, Ha-t-'Hor, "the habitation of Horus," a signification confirmed 
by the symbolico-syllabic orthography always employed in writing. 
This interpretation is not borrowed from the signification of 'Ash- 
thar or 'Athar among the Semites, but from the mythological 
character attributed to Hathor in the Egyptian religion. Since 
Set appears of undoubted Semitic origin, as adored by the 
Khetas, there is a strong probability that his name was trans- 
formed by an analogous play of words, which made it Egyptian, 
when the god himself was admitted within the cycle of the pan- 
theon on the banks of the Nile. The Egyptian meaning and ety- 
mology, which are undoubted in the case of Set's name, need not 
then be an obstacle in the way of accepting the fact of its original 
outgrowth from a Semitic appellation with perhaps a different 
meaning. Emmanuel de Bx)uge does not hesitate to say so, and he 
compares Set with Shaddai, " the all-powerful," or with the word 
shad, of which this last appellation is the plural of excellence 
{Mem. de V Acad, des Inscrip., new series, vol. XXV., 2d Part, p. 
233). The etymology here seems to me a little forced, and if it is 
necessary to find a Semitic prototype for Set, I think that after 
the Assyrian deity Shita the probabilities are in favor of Sheth. 
Set is, in fact, to Sheth as Astart is to the Phoenician 'Ashtharth, 
a transcription adopted for this name by the Egyptians when they 
wished to represent it as that of a strange god. 

The Jewish authors from whom Suidas has quoted (in his Lexi- 
con, article 1,?/d), say that Sheth was deified by the earliest man, 
owing to his inventions, and they go so far as to understand by 
the expression beni Elohim, "the children of God," in the sixth 
chapter of Genesis, a designation for the descendants of this deified 
patriarch. 

In this way we are able to comprehend the really divine attri- 
butes given to the person of the patriarch Sheth by the gnostic 
sect called Sethites, with far more paganism than Christianity 
underlying its doctrines, which sprung up on the banks of the 
Euphrates in the second century of the Christian era. "The 
theology of the Sethites," says Renan (Mem. de V Acad, des Inscr., 
new series, vol. XXIV., 1st Part, p. 166), appears to have been a 



VJ 



224 The Beginnings of History. 

genuine Babylonian doctrine, with which it was attempted 
to mingle a Biblical teaching." See the explanation of their 
cosmogony in the book of the Philosophumena, v., 19, p. 188 
et seq., ed. Miller; p. 198 et seq., ed. Duncker and Schnei- 
dewin. These sectaries professed a superstitious veneration for 
Sheth ; they said that the great divine Virtue was incarnate in 
him ; that his soul had afterward passed into Christ, and that he 
made but one with the Redeemer (S. Irenseus, Adv. hseres., I., 30 ; 
S. Epiphan., Adv. hseres., L, 3, 239 ; Theodoret, Hseret. fab., XIV., 
p. 306 ; See Tillemont, Memoir es sur Vhistoire ecclesiastique, vol. II., 
p. 318). In this way they restored, under a Biblical and half- 
Christian garb, the worship of the ancient Shita or Set. The book 
of Nabatsean Agriculture, the first version of which in the Aramaean 
tongue, Renan is, we think, correct in assigning to the period 
between the third and seventh centuries A. D., again refers to the 
Sethites (see Renan, Mem. cit., p. 165 et seq.). Ishita, son of 
Adami, is therein spoken of as a religious legislator and the 
founder of astrology and astrolatry. According to this book, he 
had followers called Ishitites ; an organized sect sprang from 
him, owning a sort of supreme pontiff (Chwolsohn, Ueber die Ueber- 
reste der Altbabylonischen Liter atur in Arabischen Uebersetzungen, p. 
27). Quite recent traces have been found of the existence of the 
Sethites (Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, vol. I. , p. 639 et 
seq.). "All the fables which the Musselmans associate with Sheth 
(see D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientals, article Scheith), regarding 
him as the prophet of that human age which they called the age of 
Sheth, have doubtless the same origin," says Renan again. Ibn- 
Abi-Oceibiah expressly attributes to the Sabseans or Mendai'tes 
the opinion that " Sheth taught medicine, and had inherited a 
knowledge of it from Adam" [Journal Asiatique, Mars-Avril, 
1854, p. 263). 

( 4 ) Mahalal'el may be "praise of God," or "splendor of God," 
as it is connected with one or other of the acceptations of the root 
Midi. It is remarkable that the Assyrian name of the month 
Ulul, to which Mahalal'el would correspond in the calendar system, 
which we will presently explain, seems to be derived from this 
root too. The form elul, with an initial aleph instead of he, given 
by the Aramseans and Jews to this month's name wnen adopting 
the Assyrian nomenclature, is susceptible of no reasonable or pro- 
bable etymology. But among these nations the appellations of 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 225 

the months all have the character of a foreign nomenclature, with 
no signification in their own languages. 

Mahalal'eTs parallel in the Qainite genealogy is called Mehu- 
iael, "struck by God." We have already spoken of the substitu- 
tion of an evil meaning for a favorable signification in the 
genealogy of the accursed race. 

( 5 ) George Smith {Transact, of the Society of Biblical Archscology , 
vol. III., p. 3G3) proposes to correct Amegalaros to Amelargalos, 
and to recognize in it, used as a proper name, the title of an im- 
portant officer in the Babylonian priesthood, being the one who, 
on the night of the 2d Nisan, at the time of the periodic rising of 
the Euphrates, recited in honor of the god Bel those liturgic 
prayers the text of which we have in the Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. 
Asia, vol. IV., pi. 46 and 47. The learned English Assyriologist 
read the title of this priest Amil-urugal, a hybrid combination of 
the Assyrian amilu or avilu and the Accadian huru-gal. There is 
no doubt that such combinations, monstrous as they may be in 
philology, do occur sometimes ; we have plain instances of them, 
like the title Rab-sak, formed out of the Semitic rabu, "great," 
and the Accadian sale, "chief, captain," the reading of which is 
certified to by a Biblical transcription (2 Kings xviii. 17; Is. 
xxxvi. 2), and the name of the god Papsukal, the messenger of 
the gods, from the Accadian pap and the Semitic hukal, the pho- 
netic expression of which we have in the gloss of Cuneif. Inscrip. 
of West. Asia, vol. III., pi. 68, 1. 64, d-e. 

These two hybrid terms could only have been found, the one in 
Assyrian, the other in Accadian, in consequence of the Accadian 
hak having become naturalized in Semitic-Assyrian, and recip- 
rocally the Semitic hukal in Accadian under the form sukal. 
But such terms should not be accepted, unless they can be 
very clearly proved, which is not the case with the sacerdotal 
title which Smith attempts to read Amil-urugal. On the contrary, 
everything about it indicates that the initial sign of the orthogra- 
phy of this title, the sign " man," is, as usual, an aphonous deter- 
minative prefix. Thus regarding it, we get the Accadian title 
huru-gal, corresponding with the Assyrian naciru rabu, "great 
observer," answering very well to the character of the person- 
age in question, attentively considering the progress of the 
periodic inundation of the river, on which depends the fertility 
of the country. But if this be the case, the assimilation 

15 



VJ 



226 The Beginnings of History. 

with, the Amegalaros or Megalaros of Berossus vanishes like a 
mist. 

( 6 ) The signification "Descent" is the only one given for the 
name Yered, in the Hebrew acceptation of .the root whence it is 
derived. The Assyrian acceptation of the same root would give 
"Service," and this meaning might appear preferable. In fact, 
we shall see in chapter viii. that the Chaldee tradition combines 
under the name of Hasisatra all that the Bible relates concerning 
Ilanok and Noah, the only two patriarchs of whom it was said 
that " they walked with God" (of Hanok, Genesis v. 22 ; of Noah, 
Genesis vi. 9). Now, the fixther of TIasisatra is called Ubara- 
tutu, which means "servant of the god Tutu," who is described 
as "parent of the gods, he who renews the gods" (Cuneiform 
Tablet in the British Museum, marked K, 2107), and as "he 
who prophesies in the presence of the king" (Cuncif. Inscrip. 
of West. Asia, vol. III., pi. 53, No. 2, 1. 15 J. This appellation 
belongs to the ante-Semitic language of Chaldea, called Accadian, 
and the Assyrian-Semitic translation of it would be Arad-Tntu. 
Now, while the extracts from Berossus by Alexander Polyhistor 
speak of the father of that righteous man who was saved from 
the Flood as Obartes, which is derived from Ubara-tutu, the 
extracts made by Abydenus from the same writer call him Ar- 
dates, which comes from Arad-Tutu ; and the first element in 
this last form, belonging to the Semitic-Assyrian idiom, is the very 
one which enters into the name of Yered. Furthermore, among 
the Chaldeo- Assyrians, the month of the year, corresponding to 
the father of Hasisatra in the calendar system, of which we shall 
speak presently, is dedicated "to the god Fapsukal, servant of 
the great gods." Now, there always exists a relationship between 
the nature of the god assigned to the month and the character of 
the antediluvian patriarch whose myth was connected with the 
same menth. Thus we may safely conclude that just here there 
occurred a misplacement of person and name between the Biblical 
and Chaldaic traditions, and that the ninth patriarch among the 
Chaldseans is the real correspondent to the sixth of Genesis. 

But, on the other hand, if we are obliged to fall back upon the 
hypothesis of a change of position, we must take account of the 
fact that Yered' s name stands in the Shethite genealogy in 
the fourth place from Enosh, the double of Adam ; that his coun- 
terpart, <Irad, is the fourth direct from Adam in the line of Qain, 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 227 

and that consequently, if primitively there was a single genealogy, 
anterior to the distinction between the two races, the criminal 
and the favored one, this was the table naturally most resem- 
bling the Chaldaic, and that Yered undoubtedly stood for the 
fourth generation therein, in which case he would have corre- 
sponded to the fifth month in the calendar system which con- 
'nected the patriarchs and ai\tediluvian kings with the months of 
the year and the celestial mazzedoth. Now, this fifth month, Ab, 
is, as we have just teen (p. 147, note 1), mentioned in the inscrip- 
tion known as " of the Barrel-Cylinder of Sargon" (1. 51 of the copy 
published in the Cuneif. Inscr. of West. Asia, vol. I., pi. 86 ; 1. 61 
of the copy published by Oppert, Inscrip. de Dour-Sarkayan, p. 18), 
as ''the month of the descent (arad) of the god Fire, dissipating 
the damp mists." Thus we should get the key to the origin of the 
name of Yered, having the meaning of "descent." It would be in 
accordance with the characteristics of the "month of Fire," as 
well as with the fiery lion which presides at that time in the 
Zodiac, and most strikingly of all with the name of the fourth 
antediluvian king in the Chaldaic list, ITammanu, "the burn- 
ing, the fiery." 

It is evident that this question, as it now stands, must be left in 
uncertainty. 

( 7 ) Unfortunately we have no record to aid us in restoring the 
original form of the name given us in the fragments of Berossus 
in a Hellenized form as Daonos or Daos, nor to furnish us with 
any clue as to the reason of the personage being specially de- 
scribed as a " shepherd." Might it chance to be a translation of 
his name, which in that event should be corrected to Raos, from 
the Assyrian rieau? I dare not say. Equally an open problem 5 
to which no solution can yet be offered, is the question of a possi- 
ble connection between this heroic personage and the god who is 
called Shar-tuli-elli, "the king of the pure tumulus," the month cor- 
responding to Daonos or Daos in the construction of the calendar 
being "the month of the pure tumulus," in Accadian dul kit, in 
Assyrian tulu ellu. In any case, the usual Semitic name for this 
seventh month of the year corresponds manifestly with this sym- 
bolic appellation, for tasrituv is manifestly related to eSretu, " sanc- 
tuary, temple," and derived from the same root by another mode 
of construction. 

( 8 ) As many legends clustered about the name of Hanok as 



\J 



228 The Beginnings of History. 

about that of Sheth, in the latter days of Judaism. They were in 
part suggested by the meaning of this patriarch's appellation, 
"the initiator," and by the tradition of his prophetic sanctity, 
grounded upon the words of Genesis regarding him. He was 
represented as the inventor of letters, of arithmetic and of astro- 
logy (Eupolem. ap Euseb., Prozparat. evangel, ix. 17). The most 
beautiful of the uncanonical Jewish Apocalypses, that which 
recounts the fall of the rebellious angels, bears his name (A. Dill- 
mann, Das Buck Henoch, Leipzig, 1353 ; Ewald, Ueber des Ethio- 
pischen Buches Henoch Entstehung, Gcettingen, 1856 ; Hilgenfeld, 
Die Judische Apohalyptik, Jena, 1857). The Jewish authors quoted 
by Suidas (in his article 2?)0) say that Hanok was deified like 
Sheth. In the Qoran and in the Mussulman tradition he receives 
the name of Idris, and is represented as a type of knowledge and 
prophecy (see D'Herbelot, Btbliothbque Orientate, article Edris). 
Idris in Arabic means "the learned," but one is justified in won- 
dering if this designation be not an altered fragment of the ancient 
Babylonian appellation Grecized by Berossus into Evedoreschos 
or Edoreschos ; Mohammed may have changed it into a form 
which had a meaning in his language. 

We shall recur to the subject of the person and name of 
Hanok. 

( 9 ) Farther on we shall recur to this name also. The corre- 
spondent of Methushelah in the Qainite genealogy is called Me- 
thushael, " the man of God." It is singular that in this instance 
the name expressing piety and divine emanation should occur in 
the wicked race. 

( 10 ) This is the interpretation of Genesius. Ewald and Delitzsch 
suggest the meaning "wild man, devastator," in connection with 
the bloody story told of Lemek and the line of Qain. As a matter 
of fact, the name is very obscure. We have previously spoken 
of this. 

( u ) This meaning is clearly indicated in Genesis v., 29 ; it per- 
fectly agrees with Noah's part in history, and satisfies all the 
exigencies of philology; therefore there is no object in abandon- 
ing it to seek an explanation for the name in " Renewer," with 
Ewald (Geschichte des Volkes Israel, 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 360 [3d 
Ed., I., p. 385; Eng. Trans., I., p. 269. Tr.]), a purely conjec- 
tural idea. 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 229 

An Assyrian tradition, preserved by Abydenus^ 1 ) 
places at the beginnings of the nation, anteriorly to 
the foundation of Nineveh, ten generations of he- 
roes, eponyms of as many successive cities. ( 2 ) The 
same Abydenus — one of those Greek polygraphers 
who, during the period of the successors of Alexander, 
endeavored unsuccessfully to popularize the tradi- 
tions of the Asiatic nations among their compa- 
triots — appears to have previously recorded the Ar- 
menian tradition of a succession of ten ancestral 
heroes, preceding Aram, who finally organized the 
nation which took his name, the tradition being sub- 
sequently adopted by k Mar-Abas Katina and the 
writers of the school of Edessa,( 3 ) and on their autho- 
rity by Moses of Khoreue,( 4 ) the national historian 
of Armenia. The Greek Cephalion, contemporary 

(!) Euseb., Chron. Armen. [I., 12], p. 86, ed. Mai ; Mos. Kho- 
ren., I., 4. 

( 2 ) See Fr. Lenormant, La Legende de Semiramis, p. 16 et seq. 

( 3 ) In regard to the personality of Mar-Abas Katina, see Qua- 
tremere, Journal des Savants, 1850, p. 865 ; Renan, Histoire des 
langues semitiques, 1st Ed., p. 244 [4th Ed., p. 262] ; Memoires de 
V Acad, des Inscrip., new series, vol. XXIII. , 2d Part, p. 327; 
Spiegel, Eranische Alterthumskunde, vol. I., p. 497 et seq. 

( 4 ) I., 4. — In this place the list assumes a form which is of a 
nature to make one doubt its antiquity, for the first four names 
are taken from Genesis. But this is the result of a factitious 
assimilation, by which the Armenians converted to Christianity 
sought to reconcile their national heroes with Biblical characters. 
By comparing what is said a little farther on by the same Moses 
of Khorene (I., 8), the list may be restored with certainty to its 
original, native form : 1. Yapedosthe ; 2. Merot ; 3. Sirath ; 4. 
Thaglath; 5. Hayg ; 6. Armenag; 7. Aramayis ; 8. Amasiay ; 
9. Kelam ; 10. Harmay. 



\J 



230 The Beginnings of History. 

of Hadrian, appears also to have been acquainted 
with this tradition.^) 

The sacred books of the Iranians, attributed to 
Zarathustra, reckon at the beginnings of man's his- 
tory nine heroes of an absolutely mythical character, 
who succeed Gayomaretan, the typical man. About 
these heroes are clustered all the traditions of the first 
ages, until they begin to assume a more natural and 
almost semi-historic character. ( 2 ) Thus we have the 
Paradhatas of antique tradition, who became the ten 
Peshdadian kings of the later Iranian legend, ( 3 ) and 
were embalmed in an epopee by Firdusi, the first 
terrestrial monarchs, " the men of the ancient law," 
who were fed on "the pure beverage of haoma, and 
who preserved their holiness." 

In the cosmogonic legends of the Hindus we meet 
with the nine Brahmadikas, who with Brahma, their 
author, make ten, and are called the ten Pitris or 
" fathers." ( 4 ) 

The Chinese reckon ten emperors sharing in the 
divine nature between Foo-hi and the sovereign with 
whom the historic age is inaugurated, Hoang-ti, whose 
advent ushers in Ki, the tenth of those periods which 

(i) Mos. Khor., I., 4. 

( 2 ) Spiegel, Avesta, vol. III., pp. lvi-lxii; C. de Harlez, Avesta, 
vol. III., pp. 2-5. 

( 3 ) All the legends relating to these fabulous kings are collected 
by Spiegel, Eranische Altertkumskunde, vol. I , pp. 508-580. 

( 4 ) On the repetition of the number ten in the Hindu tables for 
the filiation and genealogy of the first ancestors, see Laws of Manu, 
I., 34 et seq. ; Vishnu- Pur ana, p. 49 et seq. [Wilson, 1st Ed., 1840 ; 
ed. Triibner, 1864-77, vol. I., p. 100 et seq. Tr.] ; BMgavata- 
Purana, III., 12, 21 et seq. ; 20, 9 et seq. ; IX., 1, 12 et seq. 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 231 

followed each other after the creation of man and the 
beginning of " human sovereignty" upon the earth, 
Jin-hoang.Q Finally, not to multiply instances be- 
yond measure, the Germans and Scandinavians be- 
lieved in the ten ancestors of Wodan or Odin, as did 
the Arabs in the ten mythical kings of 'Ad, the pri- 
mal people of their peninsula, whose name signifies 
" ancient."( 2 ) 

In Egypt the first ages of the existence of man are 
marked by the reigns of the gods upon earth. Ma- 
netho's fragments relating to these first epochs have 
come down to us in such a changed condition that it 
is difficult to settle with certainty exactly how far 
this author accepted the belief in divine reigns. But 
the remains of the celebrated historic papyrus of 
Turin, as we have them, containing a list of Egyptian 
dynasties traced in hieratic writing, seem to indicate 
clearly that the editor of this canon recorded ten 
kings, who governed men at the beginning of things.( 3 ) 

This constant repetition among so many different 
nations of the number ten is remarkable in the ex- 
treme, and so much the more so that the number in 
question is a round one and systematically chosen.( 4 ) 

f 1 ) Pauthier, Chine, resume de Vhistoire et de la civilisation, pp. 
22-26. 

( 2 ) We referred above [p. 213] to the people of 'Ad, and we 
shall speak of them again in chapter xii. 

( 3 ) Lepsius, Auswahl der wichtigsten Urhunden des JEgyptischen 
Alterthums, pi. iii-. ; Champollion-Figeac, Nouvelle revue ency elope- 
digue, June, 1846, p. 226 et seq. (after his brother's papers) ; 
Bunsen, JEgyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte, vol. I., p. 84 et seq. 
[Eng. Trans., London, 1848-67, I., p. 53 et seq. Tk.] 

( 4 ) Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 34 et 



232 The Beginnings of History. 

"We have the proof of this when in Genesis( 1 ) we see 
this same number ten repeated in the case of the 
postdiluvian generations from Shem to Abraham, or 
rather, since the record of the Septuagint version, 
which here includes one name more than the Hebrew, 
seems more correctly to represent the ancient text, for 
the generations from Shem to Terah, father of three 
sons, heads of races,( 2 ) who in this resembled Noah 
the tenth patriarch from Adam.( 3 ) And it would 
seem that, in the book in which Berossus explains the 
Chaldaic traditions, the first ten generations after the 
deluge form a cycle, doubtless an entirely mythical 
epoch still, an appendage to the ten antediluvian 
reigns. ( 4 ) However, we might seek in vain to con- 
nect the selection of this number ten with any one of 
the refined speculations in regard to the mysterious 
value of numbers among the philosophical religions 
of paganism, for the tradition of the ten antedilu- 
vian patriarchs did not take root during this later and 
already advanced stage of human development. We 
trace it back much farther, to a really primitive 
epoch, when the ancestors of all the races among 
whom we have found it still lived contiguous to one 

V seq. and 351 [3d Ed., I., p. 39 et seq. and 375; Eng. Trans., I., 
p. 24 et seq. and 262. Tr.]. 
( T ) Chapter xi. 

( 2 ) Abram, Nahor and Haran. 

( 3 ) It may be well to add that in the Tholedoth, or Biblical 
genealogies, David is separated from Yehudah by ten generations. 
We have always the same round number. 

( 4 ) Beros. ap Joseph, Ant. Jud., I., 7, 2; Euseb., Preeparat. 
evangel., IX., 16; Berosi Chaldseorum hislorise quse supersunt, ed. 
Bichter, p. 57. 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 233 

another, intimately enough associated to account for 
this community of tradition, not being yet scattered 
abroad to any great extent. At this epoch in the 
progressive march of acquirement, ten was the highest 
number which had been reached, consequently the 
indeterminate number, and the one which was used 
to express " many" and convey the general idea of 
plurality. At this stage the primitive quinary nume- 
ration, suggested by the fingers on the hand, had 
passed on to the decimal numeration, based on the 
digital calculation of the two hands^ 1 ) which has, in 
the case of most nations, continued to be the point of 
departure for the most complete and thoroughly per- 
fected computations, which have reached to the point 
of recognizing no limit to infinite multiplication or 
infinite division, Now it is necessary to remark that 
the undisputed affinities of the names of Egyptian 
and Semitic numbers may be traced exactly to ten,( 2 ) 
and equally, if there be a relationship between the 
same names in the Aryan and Semitic tongues, it is 
likewise restricted within this limit. ( 3 ) 

( 1 ) Pott, Die guinsere und vigesimale Zsehlmethode bei Voelkern 
aller Welttheile, Halle, 1847; A. Pictet, Les origines indo-europeennes, 
vol. II., pp. 564-578; E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. I., pp. 
218-246. 

( 2 ) This relationship has been brought to light in the most con- 
vincing manner by Lepsius, Ueber den Ur sprung und die Verwandt- 
schaft der Zahltocerter in der Indo-Germanischen, Semitischen und 
Koptischen Sprachen. Berlin, 1836. See also Th. Benfey, Ueber 
das Verhseltniss der JEgyptischen Sprache zum Semitischen Sprach- 
stamm, Leipzig, 1844. 

( 3 ) Lepsius sustains the affirmative, as well as Ewald and De- 
litzsch ; but it has been combatted by the more recent labors of 
Golds tucker, with whom Sayce agrees. 



234 The Beginnings of History. 

It may be seen to what a vastly remote antiquity 
in the primitive past of the human race we arc carried 
back by the Biblical tradition of the patriarchs before 
the Flood, compared with the parallel traditions 
which are incontestably derived from the same 
source. 

Now, the genealogy of the Qatnites offers us seven 
names from Adam to Lemek, father of the three 
heads of races like Noah, and we have proved in the 
preceding chapter that the genealogy of the descent 
from Adam through Sheth shows manifest traces 
of a systematic arrangement which has carried the 
seven names parallel to those on the Qainite line up 
to ten.( x ) In the same way, the Paradhatas of the 
Iranian tradition are seven, starting from Yima, who 
was originally the first man ; they became ten only 
after Gayomaretan was placed before Yima by a 
double process analogous to that presented in the 
Biblical genealogy in the case of Adam and Enosh ; 
Yima then becomes only the fourth hero instead of 
the first man, and before him are reckoned Gayoma- 
retan, Haoshyangha and Takhnia-u-rupa. ( 2 ) In 

( x ) To make up for this — as has long since been remarked — 

the addition of the three sons of Lemek fills the list of ten names, 

\j as far as the Deluge, on the Qainite side, as with the Shethites, 

only that these ten names spread over eight generations in the 

line of Qain. 

( 2 ) Later the ten Paradhatas were no longer regarded as form, 
ing a succession of only ten generations. The enormous period of 
the reign attributed to Yima (to whom the Yesht, XVII., 30, gives 
1000 years), and the dominion of Azhi Dahaka, the representative 
of the evil principle, were divided into a series of generations of 
the legitimate line, which did not wield the sceptre, in such wise 
that Thraetaona becomes the ninth in the descent from Yima 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 235 

Egypt, though the system of the editor of the Turin 
papyrus accepts teu divine kings, the most generally 
accepted uumber in the great sacerdotal centres like 
Thebes and Memphis was but seven,( l ) and this it 
appears was the view taken by Manetho.( 2 ) 

In the Chaldaic tradition the record of the six sue- 

(Spiegel, Erdnische Alterthumskundc, vol. I., p. 538). Thraetaona, 
in Lis turn, was supposed to have reigned 500 years, and the 
Yesht, XIII., 181, makes his successor, Manustchithra, his fifth 
descendant, and the ciphers are continually added to until at last 
Manustchithra is found in the twelfth degree of filiation from 
Thraetaona (Spiegel, Ibid., vol. I., p. 549). This system, which 
seems to have been already inaugurated in Bundehesh (chapter 
xxxiv.), and which was adopted by chroniclers in verse and prose 
in mediaeval Iran, counts ten generations from Yima to Thraetaona, 
as the Bible does ten from Adam to Noah, twelve from Arya, son 
of Thraetaona, to Manustchithra, as the Bible in the Septuagint 
version from Shem to Abraham, and lastly, thirteen after Manus- 
tchithra until the mission of Zarathustra (Zoroaster), as the Bible 
from Yiyhaq to David. The parallelism is too striking to be 
fortuitous (see Windischmann, Zoroastrische Studien, p. 162 ; Spie- 
gel, Erdnische Alterthumskundc, vol. I., p. 507). But in this place 
we have no hesitancy in supposing that the Zoroastrian doctors in 
the time of the Sassanides calculated according to the Biblical 
genealogy, which certainly was not unknown to them. 

(!) See the table of the system of Thebes and of that of Mem- 
phis, in Brugsch, Histoire d' Egypte, 2d Ed., p. 20. {History of 
Egypt under the Pharaohs, London, 1879, I., pp. 27, 28. Tr.] — 
The list of Thebes contains but six names, because it cuts off from 
the number of legitimate sovereigns the murderer of Osiris, Set, 
who was regarded as an usurper and enemy. 

( 2 ) C Midler, Eragm. historic. Grace, vol. II., pp. 526, 530 and 
533. The list copied by Georgius Syncellus [Ohron., p. 19], which 
follows the Memphite system, contains fifteen names, among them 
six gods and nine demigods ; but Horus is wrongly reckoned 
among the demigods, for he is the last king of the dynasty of the 
gods, hence the correct restoration would make out seven gods and 
eight demigods among the fifteen names. 



236 The Beginnings of History. 

cessive divme revelations before the Flood deserves se- 
rious attention on our part, for this number and the way 
in which it arose is calculated to make it highly proba- 
ble that primitively there was reckoned one revelation 
for each reign or generation until the time of the patri- 
arch during whose existence the cataclysm occurred. Q 
All these facts are so many indications of the 
fact already noticed by Ewald, ( 2 ) viz., that the 
figures ten and seven have been used alternately, as 
describing in round numbers the antediluvian ances- 
tors. The Hindus also sometimes substitute the 
number seven for ten in this connection, and it is in 
this way that we find them accepting in the begin- 
ning of things seven Maharshis or " great ancestral 
saints," ( 3 ) and seven Pracljapatis, " masters of the 
creatures " or primordial fathers. ( 4 ) Of these two 

(!) Perhaps we should here interpose the observation, already- 
recorded above (p. 226, note 6), that the Chaldaean tradition gath- 
ered together under the heading of the tenth king, Hasisatra, the 
occurrences which in Genesis are divided up between the seventh 
patriarch, Hanok, and the tenth, Noah, and this seems another 
indication that the last individual before the Deluge may have 
been originally the seventh. When the list was extended from 
seven names to ten, according to this hypothesis, the Chaldasans 
carried on the whole story to the tenth place, while the Hebrews, 
V on the other hand, divided the story in two parts, leaving one 
connected with the seventh name, and associating the other, that 
relating to the cataclysm, with the tenth. 

( 2 ) Geschwhte des Volkes Israel, 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 350. [3d Ed., 
I., p. 375; Eng. Trans., L, p. 262. Tr.] 

( 3 ) Mahabhcirata, Matsyopakhyanam, 30 ; Vishnu- Pur ana, p. 23 
et seq. [Wilson's. Ed. 1840. Ed. Triibner, 1864-77, I., p. 49 et 
seq. Tr.], and Wilson's Notes, p. 49 et seq. [Ed. Triibner, I., 
100 et seq. Tr.] 

( 4 ) Multiplying this figure seven by that of the three ages of the 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 237 

numbers, between which tradition has wavered, the 
Chaldeo-Babylonian influence has powerfully con- 
tributed to cause that of ten to predominate defini- 
tively. They had in fact a special association with 
it, in consequence of a calendar system which must 
arrest our attention for a moment, and with the more 
reason since it was not without influence in the form- 
ation of the names attributed to the antediluvian 
patriarchs in the Biblical genealogy. 

According to the fragments of Berossus, the Chal- 
dsean theory allowed a total duration for the ten ante- 
diluvian reigns of 120 sars or periods of 3600 years, 
that is, 432,000 years^ 1 ) The tenth of this duration 
is 43,200 years, or 12 sars, a period which for the 
Chaldseans constituted a celestial revolution, and 
was a true cosmogonic day,( 2 ) for each sar included 
60 sosses of 60 years,( 3 ) just as the day was divided 

world, we reckon up to twenty-one Pradjapatis (Mahabharata, 
L, 33). 

(!) Fragments 9, 10 and 11 of my edition. 

( 2 ) There are serious reasons for believing that the Chaldeo- 
Babylonians valued at this figure the cycle of the precession of 
the Equinoxes, of which it is simply impossible that they had not 
formed some idea, after their long-continued astronomic observa- 
tions (Oppert, Hlstoire des empires de Chaldee et d'Assgrie, p. 34 ; 
Fr. Lenormant, Essai de Commentaire des fragments cosmogoniques de 
Berose, p. 215). 

( 3 ) The system of Chaldaic numeration was sexagesimal, follow- 
ing a scale of 1, 60, 600 and 3G00. The three superior orders of 
units were called soss (60), ner (600), and sar (3600) ; the last 
two of these names are unmistakably Accadian, nieir, or ner, and 
sar ; it still remains doubtful whether the first, sum, is of Semitic 
or non-Semitic origin, — if " sixty" in Accadian was sus or us. In 
any case, this numeral scale was invariably reproduced in all the 
orders of measurement (J. Brandis, Das Munz-Mass-und Gewichts- 



\J 



238 The Beginnings of History. 

into 12 hours,^) each of 60 minutes, and each minute 
comprising 60 seconds.( 2 ) By allowing only 12 hours 
to the nycthemeris, instead of 24, like ourselves, the 
Chaldeo-Babylonians calculated the division of the 
diurnal revolution of the sun upon the division of its 
annual revolution and that of the Zodiac. ( 3 ) Conse- 
quently, each of the sars of the period of 43,200 years 
corresponded to a sign and to a month of the year, as 
well as to an hour of the day. But this period was 
itself multiplied by 12, thus a more extended sidereal 

wesen in Vorderasien bis auf Alexander den Grossen, pp. 1-40 ; Fr. 
Lenormant, La langue primitive de la Chaldee, pp. 151-154; Oppert, 
U etalon des mesures assyriennes, fixe par les textes cuneiformes, Paris, 
1875 ; Lepsius, Die Bnbylonisch-Assyrisclien Lsengenmasse nach der 
Tafel von Senkereh, in Abhandlungen der Berliner AJcademie, for 
1877 ; Friedrich Delitzsch, Sar, Ner und Soss, in Zeitschr. JEgypt. 
Sprache und Alterthumskunde, 1878 [Heft II.]). 

(!) Ideler, Handbuch der Chronologie, vol. I., p. 86 et seq. The 
testimony of classic authors on this subject has been confirmed 
by the deciphering of the cuneiform texts. The Babylonians, 
and subsequently the Assyrians, knew of none other save the 
double hours or "Babylonian hours," as the Greek astronomers 
called them ; they named them kasbu. We have direct proof of 
this in the tables of observation of the equinoxes (Cuneif. Inserip. 
of West. Asia, vol. III., pi. 51, Nos. 1 and 2), where it says : "The 
day and the night were equal, six hours of day, six hours of 
night" — yumu u musi sitqulu VI kasbu yumu VI kasbu musi. These 
tablets prove, as may be seen, that the twelve Babylonian hours 
were reckoned from one sun to the other, just as Censorinus says 
[De die natal., 23). 

( 2 ) Lepsius, Chronologie der JEgypter, p. 128 et seq. ; J. Bran- 
dis, Das Munz-Mass-und Gewichtswesen in Vorderasien, p. 19. 

( 3 ) Letronne has already observed (in the Journal des Savants, 
1839 [Oct., p. 585. Tb.]) that the system adopted by the Chal- 
deean astronomers for the division of the circumference of the 
heavens (Diod. Sic, II., 30), necessarily led to the division of the 
diurnal revolution into twelve instead of twenty-four hours. 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 239 

revolution being obtained, amounting to 144 sars, or 
518,400 years. Movers^ 1 ) long since realized that 
the fact of the duration of the ten antediluvian reigns 
being equivalent to the ten periods of 12 sars estab- 
lished a relation between each reipm and one of these 
periods, months or hours of the great celestial revolu- 
tion; that thus the antediluvian patriarchs of Chaldea 
had been referred to those solar mansions of the Zo- 
diac^ 2 ) the Mazzdlothy worshipped by the Hebrews, 

( x ) Die Phoenizier, vol. I., p. 165; also Fr. Lenormant, Essai de 
Commentaire des fragments de Berose } p. 238. 

( 2 ) According to Diodorus Siculus (II., 30; see third appendix 
at the end of this volume), the Chaldoeans counted on the zodiacal 
band, divided into twelve signs, thirty- [six] stars, which they 
called the "gods in council." Under the supremacy of the 
twelve "master gods," presiding over the signs, one-half of these 
"gods in council" were charged with the* observation of the 
points in space above the earth, and the other half with those 
below. Diodorus adds that " every ten days one of the 'gods in 
council' is sent from the upper to the lower region, as messenger 
of the stars, while another quits his station below the earth in 
order to ascend above it, and this periodic displacement, inva- 
riably recurring, will go on to all eternity." This is a religious 
expression of the astronomic fact resulting from the proper move- 
ment of the sun ; since in reality, every ten days, the third part 
of a sign, or the l-36th of the Zodiac, rises in the evening above 
the horizon, while a third descends below it. 

The testimony of Diodorus Siculus is here confirmed by the 
cosmogonic fragment (Friedrich Delitzsch, Assyrische Lesest'dcke, 
2d Ed., p. 78, b, 1. 1-4 ; see the first appendix at the end of this 
volume, I, c, iv. ), where it is said of the god Anu determining 
the motions of the heavens: "He made excellent the mansions, 
(twelve) in number, for the great gods ; — he assigned stars to 
them, (and) he fixed the LUmasi (astronomical expression, of a 
very doubtful meaning, designating perhaps the stars of the Great 
Bear, for there are seven of these stars). He defined the year 
and determined its limits ; — for each of the twelve months he fixed 



\J 



240 The Beginnings of History. 

fallen from the faith, during the period of Assyrian 
influence, together with the sun, the moon and all 
the heavenly host, ( x ) and designated even among the 
Chaldseans by figures, the use of which has come 
down to us through the medium of the Greeks.( 2 ) 

three stars" — yubassim manzazi \_sane§rit~\ ina menuti Hani rabuti — 
kakkabi yutarsunu [va~] LTJmali yusziz — yuaddi satta eli[ha\ micrata 
yumacgir — sanesrit arhi salsati kakkabi ina menuti yusziz. 

The decanal system must, moreover, have originated with a 
people who reckoned 3G0 days in their year. 

( x ) 2 Kings xxiii. 5. 

( 2 ) The question of the Chaldnean origin of the Zodiac has been 
specially studied, in the light of the testimony of classic antiquity, 
by Ideler in the Abhandlungen der Berliner Akademie, for 1888, by 
Letronne in the Jour, des Savants, 1839 [Aug.-Nov.], and by Guig- 
niaut in his note 3d of book iv. of Creuzer's Symbolique : Religions 
de V antiquite, vol. II., p. 896 et seq. That the Chaldreans invented 
the division of the zodiacal circle into twelve equal parts, corre- 
sponding to the twelve months of the year, is universally acknowl- 
edged by all masters of the science, for the fact is distinctly attested 
by the ancients (Diod. Sic, II., 30 ; Sext. Empiric, Adv. Astroloy., 
p. 342). But they are divided in opinion as to the origin of the 
figures and names connected with these dodecatemories. Ideler 
and Guigniaut hold that the zodiacal signs adopted by the Greeks 
came to them from Babylon, while Letronne believes them to be 
of pure Greek invention. For all the talent and subtle ingenuity 
of criticism employed by him in defence of this theory, it is nev- 
ertheless false, and the direct study of Chaldeo-Assyrian monu- 
ments brings numerous and decisive proofs to bear in favor of the 
opinion of Ideler and Guigniaut (see Fr. Lenormant, Essai de 
Commentaire des fragments de Berose, pp. 229-231 ; Les premieres 
civilisations, vol. II., pp. 67-73 ; Sayce, Transact, of the Society of 
Biblical Archaeology, vol. III., pp. 161-164). 

To begin with, we have on this question a document so clear 
that it alone would suffice in proof; it is the fragment of a celes- 
tial planisphere, preserved in the British Museum, whereon may 
be read: " Month of arahshamna, star of the scorpion" [arah~\ 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 241 

arahsamna hahhab aqrabi (Fox Talbot, Transact, of the Society of 
Biblical Archaeology, vol. IV., p. 260). 

Not less positive is the astronomical document (Cuneif. Inscrip. 
of West. Asia, vol. III., pi. 53, 2, 1. 25 and 28), which makes "the 
star of the goat" preside over the month of tabit, and "the star 
of the fish (or fishes) of Ea" over the month of addar (this last 
being also found in Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. III., pi. 53, 
2, 1. 13). At the same time one is struck by the fact that the sym- 
bolic name of the month which corresponds with the sign of Virgo 
associates it with the goddess Ishtar, to whom it was also conse- 
crated ; this suggests the idea that the Zodiacal Virgin was this 
goddess, who had little of the virgin about her, and other indica- 
tions seem to show that she was represented in the solar mansion 
of ulul under her form of "Archeress of the gods" — qasitti Hani 
(Smith, History of Assurbanipal, p. 122, 1. 44). 

On another hand, whoever has studied the representations of 
the Babylonian and Assyrian cylinders knows that, in general, 
side by side with the religious subjects engraved upon them and 
forming their most prominent decorations, the background of the 
stones is covered with symbols of smaller dimension, all of a side- 
real and astronomical nature; the sun with its rays, the lunar 
crescent, the five planetary globes, the seven stars of the Great 
Bear, the Cross which represents the four cardinal points, the 
great Celestial Serpent. Joined to these symbols, whose nature and 
intention cannot be for a moment doubted, are two religious em- 
blems of a very lofty and very comprehensive nature, the symbol 
of the supreme, divine power, which represents Anu or Asshur, 
and the image of the kteIc, the mipleceth of the Bible (1 Kings xv. 
13; 2 Chron. xv. 16) ; besides these, a certain number of figures, 
which are all, without exception, those of zodiacal signs and 
present an almost complete series, as found upon the different 
monuments. 

1. The Ram or the ibex : Lajard, Culte de Mithra, pi. xvi. , No. 1 ; 
xvii., No. 6; xxvii., No. 1; xxix., No. 6; lii., No. 6; liv A, 
No. 12. 

2. The Bull: Cullimore, Oriental Cylinders, Nos. 91, 92, 106; 
Lajard, pi. xii., No. 17; xxvi., No. 5; xxvii., No. 1 ; xxviii., No. 
4; xxxii., No. 7; liii., No. 3; lvi., No. 8. 

3. The Twins, represented by two small virile figures, placed one 
upon another: Lajard, pi. xxxix. 5. As we said above, these 

16 



242 The Beginnings of History. 

Classic antiquity assures us,, moreover, that the zodi- 
acal Aquarius is noue other than Beucalion-Xisu- 
thros, the Hasisatra of the cuneiform documents, the 
righteous man saved from the flood by the protection 
of the gods.Q 

figures are more frequently inverted, feet to feet : Cullimore, Nos. 
65, 75 and 94 ; Lajard, pi. xxvi., Nos. 1 and 8 ; xxvii., No. 5 ; liv 
A, No. 6. 

4. The Cancer, figured like a crab or a lobster : Lajard, pi. liii., 
No. 3 ; lxii., No. 4. 

5. The Lion: Lajard, pi. xxxviii., No. 4; lii., No. 6; liii., No. 
3 ; lvi., No. 8. It is more usual still to find the lion devouring the 
bull, instead of the simple figure of the animal : Cullimore, No. 94 ; 
Lajard, pi. xxvi., No. 1 ; xxviii., No. 2 ; xxxiii., No. 5 ; liii., No. 6. 

8. The Scorpion: Lajard, pi. xxvii., No. 10; xxxi., No. 2; 
xxxvii., No. 6 ; liii., Nos. 3 and 4; lxii., No. 4. 

9. The Archer, represented in two examples by an archer draw- 
ing a bow: Lajard, pi. xiii., No. 8; liv A, No. 12. In other 
examples expressed by the arrow : Lajard, pi. xxix., No. 2. 

10. The She-Goat: Cullimore, No. 107; Lajard, pi. xxviii., No. 
5; xxxiv., No. 2; xxxv., No. 3; liii., No. 6. Very frequently 
the hinder part of the goat's body terminates in the tail of a fish, 
as in the figure adopted by the Greeks: Cullimore, Nos. 29, 31, 
32, 93 ; Lajard, pi. xvi., No. 3 ; liv A, No. 1 ; liv B, No. 7. 

11. The Water Carrier, represented once by the god Ramman, 
crowned with the tiara, pouring out water : Lajard, pi. xxxv., No. 4 ; 
oftener by a vase whence water flows out: Cullimore, Nos. 130 and 
131 ; Lajard, pi. xxxv., No. 3 ; pi. liv B, No. 7. 

\j 12. One or two Fishes: Cullimore, Nos. 19, 28, 88, 106, 113, 
129, 154 ; Lajard, pi. xvi., No. 5 ; xvii., No. 6 ; xxvii., Nos. 2 and 
5 ; xxviii., No. 6 ; xxix., Nos. 2 and 7 ; xxxi., No. 5 ; xxxii., No. 
5 ; xxxv., Nos. 3 and 7 ; 1., No. 2. 

Nothing is lacking in the series but the figure of the Virgin, 
which we have not yet been able to distinguish, and which per- 
haps would closely resemble the Archer, since Ishtar in this sign 
is " the Archeress ; " — and the sign which is known to us as the 
"Balance." To this we will recur presently. 
(*) Ampel., Lib. Memor., 2. 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 243 

We find this view confirmed by a more exact 
knowledge of the Chaldeo-Baby Ionian calendar^ 1 ) as 
well as by the symbolic designations of its months, 
which are connected with the cosmogonic myths, 
told in the way of episodes, or reproduced by analo- 
gous myths in the great heroic epic of the city of 
Uruk,( 2 ) the protagonist of which is a solar personifi- 
cation, and its twelve songs corresponding to the 
twelve months of the year, and the twelve signs of 
the Zodiac,( 3 ) added to which we now possess in its 

(!) See table 1, fourth appendix, at the end of this volume. 

( 2 ) This epopee is that known to scholars under the designation 
of " Epopee of Izdhubar or Gisdhubar," transcribing purely and 
simply according to their phonetic value the characters composing 
the ideographic orthography of the name of its hero, in conse- 
quence of not knowing the true reading of the name, to which we 
shall revert in chapter xiL All the fragments, so far as known, 
of this epopee are collected in George Smith's Ghaldsean Account 
of Genesis, chapters xi.-xvi. The translation of the lamented 
English Assyriologist demands a serious revision, which would 
improve it upon many points of detail ; though, on the whole, it is 
already very satisfactory. 

( 3 ) Sir Henry Rawlinson, Athenseum, 7th December, 1872; Fr. 
Lenormant, Les premieres civilisations, vol. II., pp. 67-81 ; Sayce, 
Babylonian Literature, p. 27 et seq. 

A brief summary of the contents of each of the tablets, in other 
words, of each of the cantos of the epic, in the mutilated condi- 
tion in which they have come down to us, will furnish the proof 
of this affirmation. 

Tablet /.—Wanting. 

Tablet II. — The beginning is destroyed. In what follows this 
hiatus, Izdhubar sees in a dream the stars fall from the sky. He 
sends for the Seer Ea-bani, half man and half bull, to interpret 
his dream. 

Tablet III. — Ea-bani, beguiled by Shamhat and Harimat (grace 
and persuasion personified), decides to go to Uruk, to the court of 



VJ 



244 The Beginnings of History. 

Izdhubar. Festivities to welcome him. Friendship cemented be- 
tween the two heroes. 

Tablet IV. — Izdhubar, following the advice of Ea-bani, sets out 
to attack the tyrant Humbaba in the cedar forest. Exploits of 
the two heroes on the journey. 

Tablet V. — Defeat and death of Humbaba. 

Tablet VI— Ishtar proposes herself in marriage to Izdhubar ; he 
rejects her, while reproaching her with her profligacy. Ishtar, 
enraged, persuades her father Anu to create a terrible bull, which 
ravages Uruk. Izdhubar slays the monster with the help of Ea- 
bani. 

Tablet VII — Ea-bani consults trees for an oracle. Izdhubar 
falls sick, and has frightful dreams. He seeks an interpretation 
of them from Ea-bani, whose divining power forsakes him, so that 
he cannot explain them. Death of Ea-bani. 

Tablet VIII. — Lamentation of Izdhubar over the death of Ea- 
bani. Ill, and alarmed by his visions, he decides to go and seek 
for healing and the secret of life from Hasisatra. Journey of the 
hero. He meets the two man-scorpions, who guard the rising 
and setting sun. Visit to the garden of the wonderful fruit-trees, 
guarded by the nymphs Siduri and Shabit. 

Tablet IX. — Dialogue with the two nymphs, asking permission 
to leave the garden and carry away some fruit. Izdhubar meets 
the boatman Ur-hansha (or Ur-Bel). He continues his journey 
by water with the boatman ; they end by sailing upon the " waters 
of death." 

Tablet X. — Izdhubar reaches the country of the river-mouths, 
beyond the "waters of death," where dwells Hasisatra, now im- 
mortal. He questions him. 

Tablet XI — Hasisatra answers him by telling the story of the 
Deluge. Purification and healing of Izdhubar. His return to 
Uruk. 

Tablet XII — Lament of Izdhubar at the tomb of Ea-bani. Mar- 
duk, at the command of Ea, recalls the shade of the seer from the 
"land without return," and causes it to rise to the celestial abodes, 
amid the gods. 

Thus in this epic the man-bull comes upon the stage during the 
"month of the propitious bull," the month over which Ea pre- 
sides, who is the creator of this marvellous being, as indicated by 
his name itself. Izdhubar appears in the character of a true 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 245 

Hercules (on the relationship of this hero with the Greek Her- 
cules and the Tyrian Melqarth, see Sayce, Babylonian Literature, 
p. 27 et seq. ; C. W. Mansell, Gazette archeologique, 1879, p. 116 
et seq.), during the month which is placed under the rule of Adar, 
the Chaldeo-Assyrian Hercules, and it would seem that the victory 
of the hero over the lion, which corresponds to the Nemsean, 
ought to be celebrated in this canto of the poem. Izdhubar triumphs 
over Humbaba during the "month of Fire;" Humbaba' s name 
reminding one of the Combabos of Hierapolis, type of the qedesh 
(Lucian, De dea Syr., 17-27), whose mythologic character resem- 
bles Geryon. Elsewhere we have shown [Die Magie und Wahr- 
sagekunst der Chaldseer, p. 195 \_Chald. Magic, pp. 188, 189. Tr.]) 
that the hero of Uruk is only a form of the god Fire ; his victory 
over a representative of the power of darkness and humidity, is 
nothing but a variation of the " descent of the god Fire, dissipa- 
ting the damp mists," which takes place during the month Ab, just 
as the Lion cliscomfitting the Bull, the zodiacal sign for this month, 
is another symbolic expression of the same thing (Fr. Lenormant, 
Les premieres civilisations, vol. II., p. 74). Ishtar demands Izdhubar 
in marriage during the "month of the message of Ishtar." The 
triumph of the hero over the monster raised up against him in 
consequence of the anger of the despised goddess, is the last effort 
of his unbroken strength. He falls ill and is deprived of the sup- 
port of his friend, the man-bull, in the month which follows the 
autumnal equinox, when the sun begins to decline. Entering then 
upon his journey westward, he meets two man-scorpions under the 
sign of the Scorpion ; he sails in Ur-hansha's bark, and reaches 
the "waters of death" at the winter solstice, toward the end of 
the month over which Nergal, the god of death, presides. During 
the " month of the Cavern," he penetrates the hidden retreat whi- 
ther the gods have carried Hasisatra, who tells him the story of 
the Deluge in the eleventh canto, the eleventh month having the 
sign of the Water-carrier. In the same canto, Izdhubar is cured of 
his sickness, and returns to Uruk, because in this month (Shabat= 
January-February) the sun recommences its ascending course. 
And finally the description of the deceased on his bier, in the valu- 
able monument published by Clermont-Ganneau (in the Revue 
archeologique [vol. XXXVIII. , 1879. pi. xxv., opp. p. 337;^ see 
also p. 344 et seq. Tr.]), watched over by "the two fishes of Ea," 
who guard his destiny in the other life, and protect him until the 



246 The Beginnings of History. 

integrity the list of the gods who presided over the 
twelve months/ 1 ) and who had been chosen for this 
purpose, according to the myth connected with 
each month. With all this help we begin now to 
comprehend part of the essential features of the cyclic 
construction by which the twelve months of the year 
had been made to assimilate with the twelve parts 
(of 43,200 years each) of the great period of 318,400 
years, and the ten antediluvian kings transformed 
into representatives of ten of the solar mansions. 

Conformably to the indications of classic literature, 
the eleventh month of the year (Shabat^ January- 
February) is "the month of the malediction of 
rain/'( 2 ) the month during which the story of the 
deluge is told in the epic of Uruk, and over which 
presides the god Ramman, "the inundator." If, 
then, the theory of Movers be correct, the creation of 
man and the first antediluvian reign must have been 
connected with the second month of the year and the 
sign of the bull; and, in fact, we have shown that 
the second month (Ai'r=:April-May) is dedicated to 
the god Ea, under the special title of " Lord of the 
human species" (bel teniseti). The first month (Ni- 
san=March- April) is "the month of the altar of the 
\j 

resurrection, indicates that the poem places the apotheosis of Ea- 
bani's shade, passing from the subterranean regions to the heaven 
of the gods, in the month of the Constellation of the two fishes of 
Ea. All these coincidences, so regular in their sequence, could 
not be simply fortuitous. 

( 1 ) Gr. Smith, History of Assurbanipal, p. 325 et seq. ; Cuneif. 
Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 83, col. iv. 

( 2 ) Or "of the malediction, and of the rain." 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 247 

demiurge,'^ 1 ) and two gods preside over it, Arm, the 
primordial god, analogous to the Greek Uranos, and 
Bel, to whom is attributed in a special manner the 
formation of the organized universe. This month, 
therefore, is that of the Creation,( 2 ) or rather the end 
of the period of Creation, the Sabbath of the Cosmic 

(*) In Accaclian itu bara zaggar. The last word, zaggar, is given 
as an epithet of the god Bel (Ouneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. II. , 
pi. 47, 1. 48, c-d; comp. pi. 35, 1. 55, c-d). 

( 2 ) Macrobius tells us that according to the Chaldee astrologers 
(In Somn. Scipionis, I., 21, 24), at the very day and hour when 
the motions of the celestial bodies began, the sign of Aries was in 
the South, the Moon in Cancer, the Sun in Leo, Mercury in Virgo, 
Venus in Libra, Mars in Scorpio, Jupiter in Sagittarius, and Sa- 
turn in Capricornus. Hence originated the system which played 
so large a part in the casting of horoscopes (see Genesius, Oom- 
mentar uber den Jesaia, vol. III., p. 883 et seq.), and according to 
which the Zodiac is divided into two halves, solar and lunar, con- 
taining the houses of the planets, two for each planet, after the 
following order : 



SOLAR SERIES. 

1. Leo Sun. 

2. Virgo .... Mercury. 

3. Libra Venus. 

4. Scorpio Mars. 

5. Sagittarius . . Jupiter. 

6. Capricornus . . Saturn. 



LUNAR SERIES. 

12. Cancer .... Moon. 
11. Gemini . . . Mercury. 
10. Taurus .... Venus. 

9. Aries ..... Mars. 

8. Pisces .... Jupiter. 

7. Aquarius . . . Saturn. 



(Porphyr., De antr. Nymph. , 22; Macrob., In Somn. Scip.,1., 
21, 25.) 

It is this system that the coins of Antioch in Syria indicate 
stamped with the sidereal Ram, and above it the bust of Mars, 
whose planet has its lunar domicile in this sign (Eckhel, Doct. 
num. vet., vol. III., p. 284). 

Manilius (Astronom., IV., v. 749) tells us, moreover, that the 
E,am of the Zodiac was the object of a cult all over Syria as in 
Persia, where it was honored as being the sign under which the 
world was born. 



\J 



248 The Beginnings of History. 

Week^ 1 ) which includes the duration of the creative 

( l ) The Chaldeo-Babylonians most certainly did not know or 
use the planetary week, to which classic writers attribute an 
Egyptian origin (Dio. Cass, xxxvii., 17 and 18 ; comp. Aul. Gel., 
Noct. attic, III., 10, whose authority is Varro's book Ilebdomades 
vel Be imaginibus), and of which, besides, no mention is found 
until a very recent epoch — the first century B. C. (see De Witte, 
Gazette arclieologique, 1877, pp. 52-54). The allusions supposed 
to be made to it in the cuneiform documents ( Cuneif. Inscrip. of 
West. Asia, vol. III., pi. 57, 6, 1. 57-61) have manifestly another 
meaning. The Chaldceans and Assyrians had instead a hebdomadal 
series of days of a special character. They divided the month 
into four equal parts, each composed of seven days, from the first 
to the 7th, from the 8th to the 14th, from the 15th to the 21st, 
from the 22d to the 28th. The month containing regularly 
thirty days, the last two days were excluded from the series of 
four hebdomads, which began again on the first of the following 
month, from the 1st to the 7th (see the hemerologies, published in 
Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 32 and 33, translated 
by Sayce, Records of the Past, vol. VII., pp. 159-168). The 
days of rest are the Seventh, the Fourteenth, the Twenty-first, 
and the Twenty-eighth, when " the shepherd of men must not eat 
meat, must not change the garments of his body ; when white 
robes are not worn, when sacrifice is not offered ; when the king 
must not go out in a chariot, and must not exercise justice wear- 
ing the insignia of his power ; when the general must not give 
any commands for the stationing of his troops ; finally, when 
medicines are not to be taken." All these prohibitions point to 
the fact that the days in question are days of ill omen, like the 
19th of the month, to which they equally apply. Thus they are 
seen to have no connection with the Jewish Hebdomad, George 
Smith to the contrary notwithstanding [History of Assurbanipal, 
p. 328), which is no more lunar than planetary, and which takes 
no account of the days of the month, but forms an uninterrupted 
sequence of seven and seven, the seventh day being always a sab- 
bath, not a day of ill omen, but a day of religious rest and cele- 
bration. Nevertheless, it is true that the Assyrians, if not the 
Babylonians, made use of this arrangement of the week without 
giving it a planetary character any more than the Jews did, 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 249 

work, and before which should be reckoned six days 
of the gods or six epochs of 43,200 years, which 
would coincide with the tradition brought away by 
the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity and set forth 
in the Talmudic treatise, RosK hdshandh, to the 
effect that the creation began with the autumnal 
equinox. (*) On the same principle that makes the 

making it parallel with the lunar hebdomads, which divided the 
month regularly, and that they recognized the sabbaths. This 
last fact may be positively inferred from the passage of a 
fragment of a lexicon of Assyrian synonyms, wherein yum nuh 
libbi, "clay of repose of the heart, day of joy," is translated 
sabattuv, "sabbath" (Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. II., pi. 
82, 1. 16, a-b). Furthermore, the idea of the sacred character 
of the number 7, whence proceeds the division of the week, dates 
back to the remotest antiquity among the Chaldeo-Babylonians, 
and is greatly anterior to the application of the hebdomadal con- 
ception to the group of the live planets, with the addition of the 
Sun and Moon (see Schrader, in the Theologische Studien und 
Kritiken, 1874, p. 343 et seq. ; and in the Jahrbucher fur protest- 
antische Theologie r vol. I., p. 124). 

( l ) The exactitude of this restoration is attested by several 
witnesses from classic antiquity. Diodorus of Sicily (II., 31), fol- 
lowing Berossus, says that the Babylonians carried back their 
astronomical observations 473,000 years, or as far as humanity 
itself. And, in truth, the Chronology of Berossus, as we are 
acquainted with it in the extracts from his book, reckoned from 
the beginning of the first mortal reign to the taking of Babylon 
by the Persians, 472,928 years, thus divided : 

Antediluvian period . . 432,000 years. 

Postdiluvian period : 

Reigns of Evechoos and Chomasbelos . . 5,100 " 

First Chaldsean dynasty 34,080 " 

Later dynasties 1,758 " 

Cicero (Be DivinaL, I., 19) and Pliny (Hist. Nat., VII., 57) substi- 
tute for this number of 473,000 the fuller one of 480,000. The 
second writer adds that, according to Epigenes of Byzantium, 



\J 



250 The Beginnings of History. 

the estimate should be much higher, 720,000 years (Simplicius, 
in Brandis, Schol. in AristoL, p. 475, col. 2, doubles even this 
number, making it 1,440,000 years) ; 72 myriads of years is 
the translation of the Chaldeo-Babylonian expression of 200 
sars of 3,600 years each. Now, if we add to the 120 sars of ante- 
diluvian times 10 sars, 5 ners and 3 sosses, which we gather from 
Berossus to be the length of the first 86 reigns after the deluge, 
and 72 sars for the first six cosmic days of creation, it follows 
that during the time of the successors of Alexander, the Chal- 
dcean priesthood must have held that the world was then 
approaching the middle of the 204th sar, which had gone by 
since creation first began to develop in the womb of chaos. Those 
who laid no stress on an exact chronological precision, simply 
aiming at giving a statement in round numbers, would naturally 
reckon 200 sars or 480,000 years already passed. 

I agree with Oppert (La Chronologie de la Genhse, p. 12) that 

f the 5,100 years of Evechoos and Chomasbelos should be added to 

I the 34,080 years attributed to the kings of the first Chaldeean 
epoch, although the expression in the extract from Alexander 
Polyhistor, given in the Chronicon of Eusebius, seems rather to 
indicate, both in the Greek and the Armenian, that they ought to 
be deducted. It appears to me, in fact, that in accordance with 
the spirit as well as the fundamental traditions of Chaldaic com- 
putation, the length of the postdiluvian period must have been 
longer than 10 sars, my reasons for this opinion being as follows : 
As I said above (p. 232), and as I will prove more in detail in the 
fourteenth chapter, in Berossus' work the first ten generations 
after the deluge constituted a cyclic and absolutely mythical pe- 
riod, consequently an epoch during which the reigns were still of 
enormous length, though of far shorter duration than those before 
the deluge — as may be perceived by the ciphers given for the first 
two, — and an epoch whose total figure must have formed an exact 

, number of ners or sars. This conceded, it seems most probable that 

I the duration of the first ten postdiluvian reigns reckoned alto- 
gether up to 10 sars, on the model of the ten antediluvian reigns 

, reckoning 10 periods of 10 sars each. These 10 sars or 36,000 
years would usher in the dawn of the historic or semi-historic 

, periods, which by this arrangement would be found to begin 3,180 
years before the coming in of the Elamite dynasty (called the 

j Median by Berossus), which conquered Babylonia and Chaldsea 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 251 

second month and second sign of the Zodiac corre- 

2,286 B. C. This would fix the starting-point of history, properly 
so called, in the Lower Basin of the Euphrates and Tigris about 
5,466 years before our era. From that time to the Elamite con- 
quest 76 reigns would be reckoned in 3,180 years, which would 
give an aggregate of about 42 years to a reign. But it is probable 
that the transition from the enormously long and fabulous reigns 
to those of a normoJ duration, and authentically historical, was 
not altogether sudden. There must necessarily have been, after 
the 10th sar posterior to the Deluge, an intermediary and semi- 
historic epoch, during which might be traced, as in the genealo- 
gies of Genesis, the gradual shortening of human life, from a 
duration of several thousand years down to that figure of 116 
years which Berossus, following Chaldaic doctrines, accepts as 
the term of the longest possible life in the present age of the 
world (Censorin , De die natal., 17: comp. Pliny, Hist. Nat., 
VII., 50). 

As for the Assyrians, they had cyclic computations of the same 
order, peculiar to themselves and differing from those of the 
Chaldeo-Babylonians. Unfortunately, we know next to nothing 
about them. We only have the record of King Sharru-Kinu, 
the conqueror of Samaria, in the inscription of the Bulls of Khor- 
sabad (Oppert, Inscript. de Dour-Sarkayan, p. 6, 1. 57-59), and in 
that of the Cylinders [Cuneif Inscrip. of West Asia, vol. I., pi, 36, 
1. 35 ; Oppert, Inscript. de Dour-Sarkayan, p. 16 [I. 45]) : "There 
have been in all 350 preceding kings, who exercised dominion 
over Assyria before me, and derived their royal authority from 
Bel," CCCL ina menuti malki labiruti sa ellamua belut ASsur 
ebu u va iltanapparu ba'lat Bel. According to authentic history, 
there were 60 reigns in about ten centuries from Bel-pashqi, the 
first who bore the title of King in Assyria, to Sharru-Kinu. The 
anterior epoch, that of the pontiffs of Asshur, did not last longer 
than four or five centuries, consequently could only be reckoned 
as including 25 or 30 reigns. Therefore, of the 360 kings men- 
tioned by the founder of Khorsabad, at least 260 are fabulous. 
Unfortunately he does not inform us what length of time they are 
supposed to fill. Nevertheless, the figure 350 is most noteworthy, 
with its undoubted cyclic coloring, which connects it with the 
combinations of series of round and astronomic numbers 



252 The Beginnings of History. 

spond to the first king or the first man, the third 
sign is that of the Twins, and this is the sign of the 
third month (Sivan=May-June), which, as we think, 
we have proved to correspond with the legend of the 
fratricide and the foundation of the first town, fixed 
in the Bible for the second generation of men. The 
fifth month of the year is the " month of fire," the 
fifth sign that of the Lion, which personifies the fiery- 
principle, and the fourth of the antediluvian kings 
is called Ammenon in Berossus, Hammanu in the in- 
digenous documents, " the burning, the fiery." After 
statins; these facts, could the following be regarded 
as simply the result of a fortuitous - coincidence ? 
The ninth sign of the Zodiac is Sagittarius, the 
protector of the ninth month of the Chaldeo-Baby- 
lonian year is ISTergal, the armed and warlike god par 
excellence ; the Semitic name for this month (Novem- 
ber-December) is Kisiliv, evidently derived from the 
name of the constellation of Kesil, or "the strong, 
arrogant man," which is several times spoken of in 
the Bible. ( l ) In accordance with the cyclic system, 

( 1 ) Amos v., 8 ; Job ix. 9 and xxxfiii. 31 ; Isaiah (xiii. 10) 
uses the expression "the kesils" to designate the great constel- 
lations of the heavens. 
\j Most of the rabbinical commentator's and authors of the ancient 

versions have interpreted Kesil to mean Orion. But our observa- 
tion on the origin of the name of the month Kisiliv ought to con- 
vince us that the word means the constellation of this month, 
"which is the Archer ; and this rendering agrees very well with 
the manner in which Kesil is always opposed to Kimdh, the vernal 
group of the Pleiades, denoting it as a catasterism of the end of 
the autumn or the beginning of winter. 

In a communication which I owe to the obliging friendliness of 
Mr. Sayce, it is stated that a fragment of a celestial planisphere 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 253 

which we are reconstructing, the ninth month and 
ninth sign should correspond with the eighth of the 
antediluvian patriarchs, who, in the genealogy of 
Genesis, receives the name of Methushelah, "the 
man armed with the arrow, the archer." 

The critics have been impressed — and it could not 
well be otherwise — by the exact number of 365 years 
assigned to the life of Hanok, who, at the end of that 
period, is translated to heaven.Q Starting with the 
idea that this figure refers to the days of the solar 
year, Ewald( 2 ) is determined to prove Hanok to be 
an ancient deity of the renewal of the year. A part 
of the opinion of this illustrious exegete, however, 
should be treated with considerable reserve on this 
point. With the Hebrews the year was exclusively 
lunar, and reckoned 354 days ; the Chaldeo-Babylo- 
nians assigned to it 360 days,( 3 ) without the five sup- 
plementary days, which the Egyptians added to the 
twelve months of thirty days.( 4 ) The number 365, 

among the recent Assyrian acquisitions of the British Museum, 
settles the fact that the Chaldeo- Assyrians called Orion Dumuzi 
or Tammuz. 

(!) Genesis v., 23 and 24. 

( 2 ) Geschichte des Volkes Israel, 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 355 et seq. 
[3d Ed., I., p. 380 et seq. ; Eng. Trans., I., p. 265 et seq. Tr.] 

( 3 ) "Twelve months in the year, 6 sosses of its days, the num- 
ber is mentioned," hanesrit arhi sa satti ihit saVsati susi yumisa 
minat izzaharu (Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. III., pi. 52, 3, 
rev., 1. 37). 

( 4 ) Besides the plain test which we have just quoted, we have 
other proofs for the determination of this number of 360 days in 
the Chaldeo-Babylonian year : 

1° There is not a single month for which we cannot find the 



254 The Beginnings of History . 

which coincides with that of the days of the year, in 

date for every day to the 30th, inclusive, in the historic inscrip- 
tions, though there is not a single instance of a 81st day. 

2° There is no reference anywhere to supplementary days, 
either in the dates of the inscriptions and contracts, or in the 
astrological or astronomical documents. 

3° We have two records of observations of the Vernal Equinox 
(Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. III., pi. 51, Nos. 1 and 2), 
found together, traced by the same hand, and evidently made 
almost at the same time ; the day of the Equinox is fixed in the 
one instance on the 6th of Nisan, in the other on the 15th, a cir- 
cumstance which indicates a mean error of five days between 
the civil and the true year, with which the equinox should have 
occurred regularly upon the 1st Nisan. 

4° The astrological tablets which give the augural signification 
of the eclipses of the Sun and Moon, acknowledge that they may 
occur on any day of the month ( Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. 
III., pi. 56, 1, and pi. 60), which proves that the year was not a 
lunar one. I was far too hasty (in my Essai de Commentaire des 
fragments de Berose, p. 200 et seq.) in concluding in favor of a 
lunar year of 354 days, offering alternately full and incomplete 
months, since we have two mentions of lunar eclipses, one on 
the 14th Nisan ( Cuneif. Inscr. of West. Asia, vol. II., pi. 39, 5, 1. 43 
\_g-h~]), the other on the 15th of a month which is not named {Cu- 
neif Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. III., pi. 51, 7), and a report made 
to the king, unluckily without date ( Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, 
vol. III., pi. 51, 9). in which the astrologer speaks of having 
observed the heavens from the 27th to the 30th of the month Sivan, 
expecting an eclipse of the Sun, which did not occur, but that he 
determined the new moon on the 1st of Duz. 

Thus we at once do away with the hypothesis of the Chaldeo- 
Babylonian lunar year, which was sustained by Freret [Mem. de 
V Acad, des Inscr., vol. XVI., p. 205 et seq.) and by Ideler (Hand- 
buch der Chronologie, vol I., p. 205 et seq.), and the hypothesis 
which Letronne defends in the Journal des Savants, for 1839 [see 
especially p. 590 et seq., p. 651 et seq. Tr.], according to which 
the Chaldaeans had adopted a year of 365 days, corrected by an 
intercalation of a day every four years, making a calendar which 
would have served as a model for those of Denys and Geminus. 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 255 

an Egyptian or Egypto-Hebraic tradition, assumes 
quite a different aspect, when the tradition is essen- 
tially Hebraio-Chaldsean. Besides, in order that 
Hanok may be placed at the beginning of a new 
year in the calendar system of Genesis, which makes 
the year start afresh with the autumnal equinox, 
Adam must correspond with the sign of the Ram, and 
not with that of the Bull; consequently, Aquarius 
would no longer be associated with the Deluge^ 1 ) 
Thus it is not with the number of days in the year 
that the life of Hanok coincides, but with the days 
of the astronomical revolutions of the sun, which the 
Chaldseans reckoned at first as 365 days, but later, 
their knowledge of the sidereal motions having ad- 
vanced, as 364 J days,( 2 ) and with which they harmon- 
ized their civil year of 360 days, the only one 
they ever employed, by means of a cycle of inter- 
calation.^) However, it is impossible to over- 

(!) It may be remarked, however, that this last objection could 
be overcome by placing Hanok before Yered, just as the Qainite 
Hanok precedes 'Irad. 

( 2 ) Ideler, Ueber die Sternhunde der Chaldseer, in the Abhand- 
lungen der Berliner Akademie, for 1814, Hist.-Phil. Classe, p. 217; 
Handbuch der CJironol., vol. I., p. 207. 

Some have erroneously supposed (Oppert, Commeniaire de la 
grande Inscription de Khorsabad, p. 176 ; Fr. Lenormant, Essai de 
Commentaire des fragments de Berose, p. 191 et seq.) that in the 
cuneiform texts the ideographic expression, MTJ. AN. JVA, "year 
of heaven," designated the solar tropic year, as distinguished 
from the civil year. This expression is a simple synonym of MIT 
=sattu, and indicates nothing more than the common year. 

( 3 ) We know positively that the Chaldeo-Babylonians added at 
frequent intervals a thirteenth month of thirty days to the end of 
the year, analogous to the veadar of the Jews, and called maqru la 



256 The Beginnings of History. 

addari, "incident to addar" (Norris, Assyrian Dictionary, p. 50; 
Friedr. Delitzsch, Assyrische Lesestilcke, 2d Ed., p. 70, No. 3). At 
first it was believed that this frequent intercalation had for its 
object the correction of the inexactitudes of the lunar year, and 
should be referred to an eight-year cycle analogous to that 
which Cleostratus of Tenedos introduced among the Greeks 
(Hincks, Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. XXIV., p. 
21 et seq. ; Fr. Lenormant, Essai sur un document mathematique 
Chaldeen, p. 34 ; Essai de Commentaire des fragments cosmogoniques 
de Berose, p. 212). But this idea is no longer tenable. On the 
contrary, now that we know the Chalclasan year to have been 360 
days long, we are perfectly aware that the intercalation of the 
maqru sa addari became necessary every six years to bring it into 
agreement with the solar revolution, which reckoned 365. As 
Sayce has correctly perceived [Transactions of the Society of Bibli- 
cal Archseology, vol. III., p. 160), we have here the key to the 
Chaldoean cycle of 12 years, to which Censorinus refers {De die 
natal., 18). If the computation of 12 years, with two intercalary 
months, was preferred to six with a single month, it must have been 
because the character of a celestial apocatastasis was attributed to 
it, for Censorinus says that, subsequently to its renewal, atmo- 
spheric changes, abundant harvests, famines and sicknesses, recur- 
red in the same order. Now, every twelfth year had an essentially 
apocatastatic character, since not only did it bring the solar year 
into accord with the civil year, but one of Jupiter's revolutions 
was then completed (12 years in length), and also the sixth revo- 
lution of Mars (2 years), from the beginning of the cycle. But 
at the end of a certain period it was evident that the revolution of 
the Sun should be reckoned at 365|- instead of 365 days ; that 
consequently the intercalation of a new month of 30 days became 
indispensable at the end of 120 years or two sosses, and that like- 
wise each 120th year was marked by an apocatastasis even more 
important than that of the 12th year, since Saturn then returned 
to the same point in the heavens after four revolutions (of 30 years 
each), Jupiter after 10, and Mars after 60. Hence the periodic 
return of years when not one only, but two months were inter- 
calated, the maqru sa addari, after addar, and, after ulul, an ululu 
sanu, "second ulul" (as in the table of the motions of Venus in 
Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. III., pi. 63), which we posi- 
tively know to have been of 30 days, since we possess a hemer- 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 257 

ology of it (Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 32 and 33). 
But over and above all this there came, at intervals far apart, years 
like that of which we find the astrological prognostications in Cu- 
neif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. III., pi, 56, 5, when three months 
were intercalated, a nisannu sanu, "second nisan," an ululu sanu, 
" second ulul,' ' and a maqru ha addari. This year of 15 months, with 
its triple intercalation, cannot be understood without admitting a 
superior cycle, the multiple of those of 12 and 120 years, in Avhich, 
at the last twelve-year of the last cycle of 120 years, the inter- 
calation of the sixth year was systematically omitted, in order to 
introduce three supplementary months together into the 12th 
year, for some religious and astronomical reason, which we are 
unable to explain ; so, instead of an exact knowledge, such as 
we have in regard to the periods of 12 and 120 years, we 
must here rest satisfied with a hypothesis, though I hold that 
there are serious reasons for thinking that this great cycle consti- 
tuted a ner of 600 years, embracing five periods of 120 years and 
fifty of 12 years. It is, in fact, evident that all these periods of 
astronomic intercalation must necessarily have conformed to the 
preexistent notion of the system of numeration by sosses, ners, 
and sars. Now, we know positively that the cycle of 600 years, 
the ner, was looked upon as a "great" apocatastatic "year" (Jo- 
sep. , Antiq. Jud., I., 3, 9), for not only did the 600th year bring 
about an accordance between the civil and the tropic year of 365^- 
days, the end of the 20th revolution of Saturn since the beginning 
of the ner, the 50th of Jupiter and the 300th of Mars, but it was 
almost exactly coterminous with 7421 lunations (Bailly, Histoire 
de V Astronomie ancienne, p. 66 et seq. ; Bunsen, JEgyptens Stella 
in der Weltsgeschichte, vol. IV., p. 312 [Eng. Trans., III., p. 447 et 
seq. Te.]). 

In the Assyrian Eponym Canon, for the year of Cil-Ishtar, 788 
B. C. (or 834 according to the system peculiar to Oppert), we find 
a mention of a cycle karru (Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. II., 
pi. 52, 1. 30, d; Friedr. Delitzsch, Assyrische Lesestucke, 2d Ed., 
p. 93, 1. 30 ; Oppert, La Chronologie Biblique fixee par les eclipses 
des inscriptions cuneiformes, p. 18 ; G. Smith, The Assyrian Eponym 
Canon, pp. 44 and 62). The cycle here mentioned is certainly not 
that of 12 years, nor the soss of 60 years, as Haigh supposed (see 
George Smith's answer, The Assyrian Eponymn Canon, p. 73). In 
fact, 60 years before, we fall upon the eleventh year of Shalmanu- 

IT 



\J 



258 The Beginnings of History. 

look the fact that all the figures relating to the life 
of Hanok bear the traces of a symmetrical arrange- 
ment, which undoubtedly betrays ideas of symbolism ; 
for he was born when his father Yered was 162 years 
old (9x6x3); he becomes the father of Methushelah 
at 65 years of age (7 + 6x5), and he lives 300 years 
longer, until the time when a he is transported to 
heaven, having pleased God, while the angels of 
heaven fall to earth in consequence of their trans- 
gression.'^ 1 ) He is, moreover, the seventh of the 

ashir II., the eponymate of Ishid-Raman, and this king, who care- 
fully records all the events of each year of his reign, mention- 
ing, for instance, the cyclic festival celebrated by him when he 
began the second eponymate, after having completed a half soss on 
the throne, makes no such statement at this date. Equally there 
is no mention made of recommencing the cycle in 728, the epo- 
nymate of Dur-Asshur, nor in 668, eponymate of Mar-la-arm e and 
year of the accession of Asshur-bani-abal, any more than in 714 
eponymate of Ishtar-duri, which would mark the beginning of the 
2d soss inaugurated after the year of Cil-Ishtar in Oppert's chro- 
nological system (the commencement of the first would fall within 
the interruption of the Canon which this scholar supposes to have 
occurred between Asshur-nirari and Tuklati-abahashar II.). The 
possibility that the intercalary period of 120 years may be the one 
in question is thus done away with, as well as the hypothesis of 
the soss, and consequently the shortest period under consideration 
in this case must be 600 years, the "great year" of Josephus. 
We may add that the beginning of a ner at the eponymate of Qil- 
Ishtar would imply a chronological system, only differing by 122 
years from that which we believe may be restored from Berossus, 
if we place this eponymate in 788, as seems the most probable, 
and by 146, if we remove it to 884, with Oppert, for, in the first 
case, by going back 8 ners, we find ourselves at 5588 B. C. (instead 
of 5466). for the beginning of the period posterior to the first 10 
sars after the deluge, while in the second case the date is 5634 
B. C. 

(i) St. Iren., Adv. hxres., IV., 16, 2. 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 259 

patriarchs from Adam, and the way in which the 
Epistle of St. Jude dwells upon this peculiarity, 
referring to a passage in the Apocalyptic and Apoc- 
ryphal book, which bears the name of Hanok,^) 
shows that the Jewish tradition did not hesitate to 
give a symbolic interpretation to this circumstance.( 2 ) 
In the Chaldaic tradition, the reign of the seventh 
antediluvian king, who corresponded in order with 
Hanok, is marked by the last of the divine revela- 
tions^ 3 ) and among the divine protectors of the 
months, the deity of the eighth month, the month 
associated with the seventh of these primordial mon- 
arches, is " Marduk, herald of the gods," while the 
month itself is called that a of the opening of the 
foundation." Now, if the name Hanok character- 
ized this patriarch as the " Initiator," the " Intro- 
ducer" par excellence, it was, as we have said, in 
reference to the spiritual life ; he is a type of right- 
eousness, of purity of life, and prophetic sanctity. 
Hence originate all the legends which Judaism has 
grouped about his name;f 4 ) hence the coloring of the 
local traditions of Iconion in Lycaonia, where he was 
known under the name of Annacos, and represented 
as a prophet. ( 5 ) Hanok, who, as we are told, was 

(*) Compare Jud. Epist., 14 and 15, with Henoch, I., 9; St. 
Jerome, Catal. scriptor. eccles., s. v. ; In Tit, I., p. 708 \De Viris 
Illustr. 833. Tr.]. 

( 2 ) Comp. S. Augustine, Contr. Faust., XII., 14. 

( 3 ) Beros., Fragm. 9, 10 and 11 of my edition; see the second 
appendix at the end of the present volume. 

(*) See above, p. 227, note 8. 

( 5 ) Steph, Byz., v. 'Iiwvwv; Suid., v. TSavvaKOQ. 



260 The Beginnings of History. 

deified like Sheth^ 1 ) thus happens, in the essential 
features of his physiognomy, to bear a remarkable 
resemblance to the Babylonian Marduk, " the herald 
of the gods," the special revealer, the common medi- 
ator between Ea, master of supreme wisdom, and 
men,( 2 ) he whose planet (Jupiter) watches over the 
maintenance of justice in the world, and in that char- 
acter receives the appellation Ccdeq from the Jews ; 
finally, " he who walks before Ea,"( 3 ) just as Hanok 
" walked with God."( 4 ) But Marduk was originally 
a solar personification, and has always retained some- 
thing of that character ;( 5 ) his name is simply a Se- 
mitic corruption of the Accadian Amar-utuki, signify- 
ing " sun-brilliance ;'\ 6 ) the solar number of 365 years 
is thus specially appropriate to him, and I am im- 
pressed with the idea that when the Hebrews first 
attributed this length of life to Hanok, they borrowed 
it from a foreign computation, where it was founded 

(i) Suid., v. 1^6. 

( 2 ) On the analogy between Marduk or the Accadian Silig-mulu- 
khi, who is identified with him, and the archangel Craosha, " the 
saint and the strong one," in the most ancient texts of the Zoro- 
astrian religion, and especially with Mithra, as he was represented 
after the times of the Achaamenicles, see Fr. Lenormant, Die Magie 

\j und Wahrsagekunst der Chaldseer, p. 201. \_Chald. Magic, p. 195. 

Tn.] 

( 3 ) "I am he who walks before Ea," a hymn makes him say; 
. . . "I am the oldest son of Ea, his messenger," alik mahri &a 

Ea anaku — . . . ablu risti sa Ea abal liprihi anaku ( Cuneif. In- 
scrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 30, 3, rev., 1. 42-45). 

( 4 ) The expression "walk before God" is used in the Pentateuch 
as synonymous with "walking with God" (Genes, xvii. 1). 

( 5 ) Fr. Lenormant, Les dieux de Babylone et de V Assyrie, p. 25. 

( 6 ) Fr. Lenormant, La langue primitive de la Chaldee, p. 369. 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 261 

upon the assimilation of the seventh patriarch to the 
protecting divinity of Babylon. 

We should now state that, while, on the one hand, 
Marduk is a god who is supposed to have reigned on 
the earth, and in Babylon, where his tomb was 
shown ;(*) on the other hand, he is the last of the 
personifications of the Sun, found in the cycle of 
the gods assigned to the months. And the succession 
of these personifications of the Sun in the course of 
the calendar is essentially significant; it expresses the 
principal phases of its revolution, its alternations of 
waxing and waning. In the first place, in the month 
of Duz, at the time of the summer solstice, he was 
" Adar the warrior," or " the Sun of the South, the 
Sun of Noon," who, like Adar-Malik, corresponds 
to the Moloch of Phoenicia and Palestine ; the impla- 
cable Summer Sun, who, at the hour of noon, when 
the intensity of his flame reaches its culminating 
point, devours the productions of the earth, and who 
can be appeased only by human victims; he it is 
who, at the beginning of this month Duz, slays Du- 
muzi (Tammuz- Adonis), the young and gracious Sun 
of the Spring. ( 2 ) Three months later, in Tashrit, at 
the autumnal equinox, he becomes Shamash, "the 
supreme and equitable judge of heaven and earth," 
"the director," "the law which enforces the obe- 

(!) W. Baudissin, in the Theologische Literaturzeitung (Schiirer), 
1876, p. 75 ; Fr. Lenormant, Die Magie und Wahrsagekunst der 
Ghaldseer, p. 139 [Chald. Magic, p. 132. Tr.]. 

( 2 j To eap vko rob 6f:povg avatpeirat (Laurent. Lycl., De mens., 
iv., 44, p. 212, ed. Roether). 



VJ 



262 The Beginnings of History. 

dience of the lands ; "Q the Sun of the Equinoxes 
dividing equally the day and the night, exercising 
his power with justice and moderation. Marduk 
succeeds him in the month of Arah-shamna, already 
ruled by the hostile power of the sign Scorpio, the 
month during which each day beholds the energy of 
the luminous orb diminish, and makes it descend 
one step toward its annual decline. Marduk, adver- 
sary of the demons, is thus the Sun, still combat- 
ting the advance of the principle of darkness and 
winter, but at last succumbing in the struggle. 
He was chosen to preside over the eighth month 
(October-November), as being the one of the solar 
gods represented by Mythology as suffering periodic 
death( 2 ) each day at the evening hour, when, like 
the Greek Hercules, he ascends the sunset pyre,( 3 ) 
and each year at the beginning of the winter 
season. Nergal, too, the god of death, whose name 
in Accadian meant originally "the ruler of the 
tomb," ne-urugal,^) is the god who takes his place, 
succeeding to his rule in the month of Kisiliv, 

( 1 ) Kittuv qasrit uzni ha matati (Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, 
vol. IV., pi. 28, 1, 1. 28). 

( 2 ) Fr. Lenormant, Les dieux de Babylone et de V Assyrie, p. 25; 
Die Magieund Wahrsagekunst der Chaldseer, p. 189 \_Chald. Magic, 
p. 132. Tr.]. 

( 3 ) The ascension of Hanok into heaven has already been com- 
pared with that of Hercules, who ascended into the celestial abodes 
from the pyre of Mount (Eta (Ruperti in Henke' ' s Magazin, vol. VI., 
p. 194 et seq.). 

( 4 ) Fried. Delitzsch, in G. Smith's Chaldseische Genesis, p. 275 
et seq. — See the titles of this god in Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, 
vol. III., pi. 67, 1, 69-77, c-d. 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs, 263 

"month of the thick clouds;" Accadian, itu gan- 
ganna,^) the month ending with the winter solstice, 
this being the very epoch of the annual death of the 
Sun.( 2 ) This sequence of events, this continuous 

( 1 ) In order to satisfy oneself as to the signification of this 
symbolical Accadian name of the month of Kisiliv, it will be 
necessary to refer to Caneif. Inscr. of West. Asia } vol. III., pi. 67, 
1. 43 and 44, c-d, where, among the titles of the god Ramman, we 
read : 

Accad. ana gan = Assjr. sa upe "(god) of the light clouds;" 
Accad. ana gangan = Assyr. sa urpiti "(god) of the thick 
clouds." 

( 2 ) The day of the winter solstice, day of the periodic death of 
the Sun, is immediately followed by his resurrection, and his 
setting forth on his ascendant course. This explains, in the 
Dionysiac worship of Phocis, the simultaneous occurrence of the 
nocturnal ceremony performed by the Hosioi at the tomb of the 
god in the temple of Delphi, and the orgiastic festival when the 
women on the mountains awakened with their cries Licnites, or 
the new-born Dionysos, asleep in the mystic winnowing fan, which 
serves him for cradle (Plutarch, De Is. et Osir., 35). The sym- 
bolical Accadian name of the month which immediately follows 
the winter solstice, Tebit, itu abba uddu, "the month of the cave 
(or adyton) of the (Sun) rising," undoubtedly contained an allu- 
sion to this. To understand the meaning of it, it is enough for 
all intents and purposes to recall the rites of the festival in honor 
of the new birth of the young Sun, as celebrated by the Sarraceni, 
according to St. Epiphanius (ap. Schol. Gregor Bodley., p. 43; 
comp. Lobeck, Aglaopham., p. 1227), when at midnight they en- 
tered the subterranean sanctuary, whence the priest presently 
came forth crying: " The virgin hath brought forth ; the light is 
about to begin to grow again." This ceremony took place each year 
on the 25th December, the day of the Natalis Solis Invicti, in the 
oriental worship of the Sun, engrafted at Rome in the third cen- 
tury (Preller, Rdmische Mgthologie, 1st Ed., p. 756), the day of the 
festival of the "Awakening of Melqarth," eyepaig 'Rpaicleovg, 
at Tyre (Joseph., Antiq. Jud., VIII., 5, 3 ; comp. Contr. Apion., 
I., 18), the day likewise for celebrating the great Persian fes- 



VJ 



264 The Beginnings of History. 

tival of Mithra (Hammer, in the Wiener Jahrbilcher der Literatur, 
1818, I., p. 107; see especially Windischmann's dissertation, 
Mithra, ein Beitrag zur Mythengeschichte des Orients, Leipzig, 1857), 
when he was born of a stone in the depths of a dark grotto (S. 
Justin., Contr. Tryphon., 70; comp. Eubul. ap. Porphyr., Be Antr. 
Nymph., 6). We know that it was felt to be expedient to uproot 
these essentially popular festivals by substituting for them a fes- 
tival applicable to the new religion, and therefore the heads of 
the Church in the West fixed upon the 25th day of December, in 
the beginning of the fourth century, for the celebration of the 
birth of Christ, the exact anniversary being unknown (see the 
notes of P. Petavius on the works of the Emperor Julian, p. 87). 
The Christ was to them, in a spiritual sense, the new Sun, Sol 
novus, whose material birth the pagans celebrated on the day 
when its orb recommenced its heavenly ascension (see Creuzer- 
Guigniaut, Religions de V antiquite, vol. I., p. 364). 

The sign corresponding to the month of the new birth of the 
Sun in the depths of its cave has Capricorn for its zodiacal sign, 
which, as we observed above, is represented on the Assyrian 
cylinders under the figure of a she-goat with the tail of a fish. 
This zodiacal monster, so say the classic writers, is iEgipan, son 
of Pan, and of iEga, the goat-nurse of Jupiter (Hygin., Poet. As- 
iron., II., 28), or Pan himself, son of iEgipan and of iEga (Era- 
tosthen., Catasterism. } 27; Theo. ad Arat., Phsenomen., v. 283), 
who assumed this hybrid shape when the gods took the appear- 
ances of animals in order to escape from Typhon (Hygin., Fab., 
196 ; Poet. Astron., II., 28 ; Schol. ad Germanic. Caes., p. 69, ed. 
Buhle; comp. Ch. Lenormant, Nouvelle galerie mythologique, p. 32). 
But according to others it is the goat herself that nourished Ju- 
piter (Schol. ad Germanic, 1. c .), which agrees with the engraved 
stones that represent iEga as a woman holding a trident and a 
dolphin, seated upon a goat with the tail of a fish, with Pan close 
beside her (Bripronte gemmarie dell 'Institute Archeologico, cent. IV., 
Nos. 11 and 12), and with the arrangement of the rustic calendar 
in the Farnese collection, which places the sign Capricorn under 
the empire of a goddess, Juno. This authorizes us in comparing 
the zodiacal goat with the animal of the same species, which, in 
innumerable myths of oriental origin, figures as nurse to the 
young solar god in the grotto where he is concealed in infancy. 
It is iEga or Amalthea in the Cretan fable of the infancy of Zeus 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 265 

(Preller, Griech. Mythol., 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 102 et seq.), which is 
quite permeated with the Phoenician element ; it is the goat Amal- 
thea, which in the Libyan fable nourishes Dionysos Ammonius 
(see the bas-relief in the Musee Napoleon, vol. II., pi. xxix. ; 
Miiller-Wieseler, Denkmseler der alien Kunst, vol. II., pi. xxxv., 
No. 411), who was one of the forms of the divine son in the 
Carthaginian Triad (J. Dereubourg, Comr>tes-Rendus de V Academie 
des Inscriptions, 1874, pp. 281-236; Philippe Bei'ger, Gazette arche- 
ologique, 1876, p. 124 ; Journal Asiatique, Aout-Septernbre, 1876, 
p. 264: Fr. Lenormant, Gazette archeologique, 1878, p. 167), the 
goat which, on the priestly head-band of silver, discovered near 
Batnah [Gazette archeologique, 1879, pi. xxi.), figures among the 
most important symbols of Tanith, divine mother in this Triad, 
so that Diodorus of Sicily (III., 73 ; comp. 69) conceives the 
pair Ba'al-Fammon and Tanith to be Ammon and Amalthea, 
parents of the Libyan Dionysos. And although a male iEgipan 
is most apt to appear in the Greek Zodiac instead of this 
nursing goat, the clue for such a substitution is furnished us by 
the Phrygian legend of Attys, in which the young solar god is fed 
with the milk of a he-goat (Pausan., VII., 17, 5; Arnob. Adv. 
gent., V., 6) instead of the milk of a she-goat (see Fr. Lenormant, 
Monographic de la Vote Sacree Eleusinienne, vol. I., p. 868), 

Now the skin- of the she-goat which nourished Zeus became the 
iEgis of the god (Eratosthen., Catasterism., 13; Hygin., Poet. As- 
tron., II., 13; Serv. ad Virg. JEneid., VIII , v. 354), the ^Egis on 
which fish-scales frequently replace the goat-hair (Ch. Lenormant, 
Nouv. gal. Mythol., p. 31), the symbol of tempests (Ch. Lenormant, 
Nouv. gal. Mythol, p. 30; Gerhard, Griech. Mythol., \ 202, 1; 
Preller, Griech. Mythol., 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 94; Welcker, Griech. 
Goetterlehre, vol. I., p. 167), and when the fish's tail gives the 
goat a direct connection with the damp element, the signification 
becomes still more marked. The infant god nourished by the 
she-goat in a cave is thus the new Sun, born again after the 
winter solstice, increasing gradually in strength, hidden by the 
fogs and storms of the "month of thick clouds." And in fact all 
the prognostications of the astrologic tablets in cuneiform writing 
agree in demonstrating to us that in Chaldea, where these concep- 
tions had their origin, the month of Tebit was particularly cloudy 
and tempestuous. 

To the tempests of the Zodiacal Goat succeed the diluvian rains 



266 The Beginnings of History. 

retrogression, is reflected in the construction of the 
genealogy of the antediluvian patriarchs of the line 
of Sheth, at least so far as we can judge from the 
skeletonized condition in which it has come down 
to us. But the signification undergoes a complete 
change. What was an expression of the phases of 
the solar revolution in the cycle of the gods of 
the months among the Chaldseans, what in their tra- 
dition of antediluvian history was a fatalistic and 
almost wholly physical evolution of the existence of 
the world, becomes a purely moral decadence of the 
whole human race, which " corrupts its way " by sin, 
ceases to listen to the divine precepts, and by the ac- 
cumulation of errors committed of its free will, excites 

of the sign of the Water-Carrier, in the month of Shabat, placed 
under the auspices of Ramman, the inundater, rahigu, "he who 
makes the rain to fall," musaznin zunnuv (Cuneif Inscrip. of West. 
Asia, vol. I., pi. 55, col. 4, 1. 57). Ramman himself was originally 
a solar god, the Sun, represented as causing and producing rain 
(Fr. Lenormant, Les dieux de Baby lone et de V Assyrie, p. 26; Die 
Magie und Wahrsagekunst der Chaldseer, p. 140 [Chald. Magic, 
p. 132. There called "Bin." Tr.]); he is called "the Sun 
of the South at the height of his course" (Cuneif. Inscrip, 
of West. Asia, vol. II., pi. 57, 1. 76, c-d), and among the 
secondary personages who form his cortege we find Niphu- 
i shamshi, "sun-rise," and Nuru-shamshi, "sun-light," besides 
Barqu, "the lightning," Ish-birqi, "the fire of the thunder," 
and Taramu, "the muttering of the thunder" (Cuneif. Inscrip. of 
West. Asia, vol. III., pi. 66, obv., 1. 17-20, b). The rains of 
Shabat, which renew the fertility of the earth, and from which 
the young Sun emerges with increased strength, become a symbol 
of the cosmogonic deluge, which renewed the face of the earth, 
and restored perverted humanity ; in the heroic epopee of Uruk 
they are represented by the waters into which Izdhubar (?), the 
fiery and solar hero, plunges, in order to be healed of his leprosy, 
and recover his health, his brilliancy, and his power. 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 267 

the anger of God, drawing upon itself the terrible 
punishment of the Deluge. The evolution passes 
into the spiritual order and becomes an occasion 
of the most sublime teaching. The symbolical 
dress remains the same, but instead of embodying, 
as among the Chaldseans, naturalistic myths, it be- 
comes the figurative garb of truths of the moral 
order, disengaged from all gross intermixture with 
the physical order. The inspired writers here, as in 
all the first part of Genesis, have given the first 
example of the precept which was subsequently for- 
mulated by St. Basil : they have taken the golden 
vessels of the Gentiles to use in the worship of the 
true God. 

Thus Hanok, like that Marduk some features of 
whose physiognomy he has retained, ceases to repre- 
sent the Sun, still struggling against the progress of 
the power of winter, and finally succumbing in the 
strife, he appears as a righteous man, who, alone of 
his generation, " walked with God," whose piety and 
sanctity contrast with the corruption that already pre- 
vails among his contemporaries, even of the chosen 
line. Moreover, he remains on the earth a shorter 
time than any other one of the Shethite patriarchs, 
for God translates him out of a world unworthy of 
him^ 1 ) After his disappearance, corruption reigns 
undisputed on the earth, and hastens the visitation of 
divine vengeance. And the signification of the last 
two names in the genealogy of the descendants of 
Sheth, before righteousness and piety again appear in 
Noah, the names of the son and grandson of Hanok, 

(!) Wisdom, iv., 10; comp. Sirach xliv. 16; Hebr. xi. 5. 



\J 



268 The Beginnings of History. 

Metlmshelah and Lemek, express only ideas of vio- 
lence analogous to those suggested by the names 
of the descendants of Qain. It is at this point that 
in the accursed race the " man of God " (Methushael) 
appears as the fellow to "the man with the ar- 
row" (Metlmshelah), or "the murdering man/'f 1 ) 
recorded in the line of the blessed son. This last 
contrast seems to trench upon the respective charac- 
teristics of the other portions of the genealogies, and 
suggests the idea of the Shethites having become so 
perverted as to have sunk morally below the Qainites 
themselves.( 2 ) 

I will not farther extend these observations, which 
have already occupied too much space. Our knowl- 
edge is still too imperfect to allow of a complete 
restoration of a very complex calendrical fabric, 
which undoubtedly may be traced back to an ancient 
date,( 3 ) but which, far from being primitive, bears, 

(!) Philo (De posterit. Cairn, 12 and 13, pp. 231, 233, ed. Man- 
gey) explains Metlmshelah, s^aTTOGTo?.?) dovdrov, finding in bis 
first element maveth or moth, "death," instead of math, "man." 

( 2 ) The name of Methushael is of peculiar interest from a lin- 
guistic point of view, since it is absolutely Assyrian in form, 
mutu-sa-ili ; far more Assyrian than Hebrew. Fritz Hommel 
(Zwei Jagdinschriften Asurbanibals, p. 22) does not doubt that it 
is borrowed from Babylonia and Chaldea, and remarks with 
justice that the exact preservation of the Assyrian sibilant 
in the Hebrew ranks this adaptation grammatically in the class oi 
such as were made during what he calls die altbabylonische Periode, 
about 2000 B. C. 

( 3 ) The precession of the equinoxes determines with certainty 
the terminus post quern of the possible existence of all this calendri- 
cal construction, which is 2450 B. C. , the date when the entrance 
of the Sun into the first point of the sign of the Ram began to 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 269 

coincide with the vernal equinox (Sayce, Trans, of the Soc. of Bib. 
Archeology, vol. III. , p. 237). In fact, the observation of the star 
Alpha of the Rani, called in Accadian Dil-kar, " who announces 
the light," and in Assyrian Iku, astronomically determined the 
beginning of the year, ris iatti (Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. 
III., pi. 52, 3, rev., 1. 39). And the signs of the Chaldean Zo- 
diac could not have been named as they were, before this event, 
since those of Leo and Aquarius at least owe their appellations to 
the climatic conditions, the first in July and August, the second 
in December and January, that of Aries being due to the fact 
that the march of the year began with him. He is, as the saying 
was in Accadian, the lu-lim (the expression passed into the form 
lulimu in the Semitic- Assyrian), meaning the " Leader- Ham " of 
the flock of stars in the zodiacal belt, just as Saturn, among the 
planets which are represented as sheep in continual motion (in 
Accadian lu-bad, in Assyrian bibbu), is the lu-lim, the "Leader- 
Ram" (Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. II., pi. 48, 1. 52, a), 
as being the loftiest of all (in Accadian sak-us, in Assyrian 
kaivanu, Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. II., pi. 32, 1. 25, e-f), 
the nearest to the heaven of the fixed stars, and also leading all 
the rest in importance for the augur (Diod. Sic, II., 30).. The 
imagination of the Chaldeo-Babylonians, as of the Western Asiatic 
peoples in general, saw in the stars a vast flock scattered over the 
celestial spaces, and each orb which appeared to lead the course 
of a cluster of other stars was a lu-lim, a " Leader-Ram," or 
chief, for this expression, appertaining to pastoral life, finally 
became a poetic way of designating a chief or a king {Cuneif. In- 
scrip. of West. Asia, vol. II., pi. 31, 1. 41, d-e). 

The period about the second millennium before the Christian 
era marks a decisive epoch in the intellectual and religious his- 
tory of Chaldrca and Babylonia. Then it was that, under the 
auspices of Sharru-Kinu I., a king who came from Agadhe in 
Northern Babylonia, and of his son, Naram-Shin, was formed the 
collection of classic, religious, liturgical, astronomical, augural, and 
other books, which served henceforth as a basis of sacerdotal cul- 
ture. Then it was that that vast and learned system, at once 
religious and philosophical, was definitively established, gathering 
under a great hierarchy all the divinities and all the faiths, at 
first peculiar to each one of the various elements which had gone 
to make up the population of the Lower Basin of the Euphrates 



270 The Beginnings of History. 

on the contrary, the stamp of the refinement of a 
long sacerdotal culture, to which it would even 
appear that several deposits of legends artificially 
combined had contributed^ 1 ) It suffices- to have 

and Tigris, a system which anciently made the glory ot Babylon, 
and has been compared to the Brahmanism of India (Fr. Lenor- 
mant, Die Magie und Wahr.sagekunst der Chaldseer, p. 132 et seq. ; 
345 et seq. [Chaldsean Magic, p. 125 et seq. , 327 et seq. Tb.]). 
Like Brahmanism, that sacerdotal and religious reform in 
Babylonia was essentially syncretistic, and henceforth Baby- 
lon became the classic ground of the spirit of syncretism, 
which twenty centuries later was destined on this very 
ground to attain the proportions of a veritable intellectual 
disease, after new alluvia of Jewish, Hellenistic, and, finally, 
Christian ideas had been deposited upon the ancient indigenous 
bottom. It will doubtless occasion some astonishment to find this 
spirit traced back to so remote a period among the Chaldeo-Baby- 
lonians, for a tendency to syncretism is a mark of old age and of 
decay, which only crops forth at a late stage in the march of the 
intellectual and religious development of nations. But the con- 
ception of a later age is essentially relative, and cannot be used 
alone to determine an epoch. Twenty centuries before the Chris- 
tian era, Chaldea, like Egypt, was a land which reckoned the 
anterior duration of its culture by thousands of years, with its 
eclipses and renewals, having pushed its speculations to a singu- 
larly advanced stage of refinement, and given incontestable evi- 
dences of old age It bordered upon the epoch when it was ready 
to lie immoveable for centuries in the mould of the past, after the 
fashion of China 

(*) So far it seems evident that the symbolic Accadian nomen- 
clature of the months and the choice of their protecting deities 
must have preceded the nomenclature of the signs of the Zodiac, 
and served as its point of departure. As to the Semitic no- 
menclature of the months, which we find to be common to the 
Assyro-Babylonians, the Arabians, and the Jews of the last epoch, 
we cannot so far positively determine its existence by cuneiform 
texts of an earlier date than the twelfth century before our era. 
Sayce [Trans, of the Society of Bibl Archseology } vol. III., p. 237 et 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 271 

settled the fact of their existence, and determined 
several points, which enable a partial apprehension 
of their essential economy. 

What was of consequence to us was to show that 
the Chaldseans had placed the ten antediluvian pa- 
triarchs in ten of the solar mansions, and that there 
is reason to suppose that this fact exercised an influ- 
ence upon the formation of the list of patriarchs in 
the Hebrew tradition, as collected and received, pri- 
marily by the writer of the Elohist document, later 
by the final editor of Genesis. 

An undoubted Chaldeo-Babylonian influence c&r- 

seq.) has produced arguments of some value to establish the fact 
that they must have been invented, not by the Babylonians or 
Assyrians, but more probably by the Aramseans, perhaps by the 
people of Harran, which appears in the cuneiform documents as 
one of the most ancient centres of astrological culture (Cuneif. 
Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. III., pi. 67, 1. 28, a-b; see Sayce, 
Trans, of the Soc. of Bibl. Archaeology, vol. III., p. 168). The 
strongest argument in favor of this point has, however, been 
overlooked by the learned Oxford Assyriologist. It is derived 
from the name of the month Tebet, evidently borrowed from the 
zodiacal she goat, which has this signification in the Aramaic 
idiom only. It is at least quite certain that in Assyria, parallel 
to the customary names of the months, and as occasional syno- 
nyms, some traces of an entirely different nomenclature can be 
found of a more decidedly Assyrian type, in which Sivan was 
called Kuzallu and Tebet tamhiri (Fried Delitzsch, Assgrische Le- 
sestuche, 2d Ed., p. 70). The earliest known Assyrian inscription 
on which a king's name may be read, that of Ramman-nirari, son 
of Pudilu, who reigned during the second haif of the fourteenth 
century B. C. (Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 44 and 
45), contains an appellation of this series, not identified so far, 
for the date is that of the month of Muhur Hani, "gift of the gods." 
See for further details the fourth appendix at the end of the 
present volume. 



\J 



272 The Beginnings of History. 

ried this cyclic and ealendric conception into the 
Mazdeism of Iran, there creating a fabric of the same 
nature, but simpler and with less pretentious num- 
bers, which we find expounded in the thirty-fourth 
chapter of the Bwndehesh.( l ) The twelve millen- 
niums, which included the existence of the world, 
ending in the final defeat of the Evil Spirit, and the 
resurrection of the dead, are each placed under the 
dominion of one of the zodiacal signs. The creation 
took place in the Ram, and the first three signs cor- 
respond with the first cosmic age of 3000 years, which 
was reckoned from the creation of the universe to the 
formation of man. This event transpired at the be- 
ginning of the millennium of Cancer, that is to say 
under the sign corresponding, in the Biblical geneal- 
ogy, to Enosh, the second primordial typical man, the 
repetition of Adam, the same sign under whose au- 
spices is placed in the Chaldsean calendar the month 
of the "gift of the seed," su kulga, meaning the seed 
or germ of animated beings, for such in Accadian is 
the special meaning of the word kul, the designation 
of the seed of vegetable matter being he. The domin- 
ation of the three signs, Cancer, Leo, and Virgo, ex- 
tends over the 3000 years, which Gayomaretan and 
the typical Bull passed on the earth, shielded from the 
powers of evil. The entrance upon the scene of the 
forces of Angromainyus marks the opening of the mil- 
lennium of the sign of Libra, which was formerly that 
of the claws of the Scorpion, and still more anciently 
that of the first Scorpion. ( 2 ) The Spirit of evil in- 

(!) See Spiegel, Eranische Alterthumslcunde, vol. I., pp. 502-507. 
( 2 ) It is known that at the time of Eudoxius, of Aratos, and 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 273 

stigates the Scorpion, which strikes the typical Bull 
dead, and thirty years after succeeds in slaying Gayo- 
niaretan; the Chaldsean Epos of the City of Uruk 
represents its hero, in the canto corresponding to this 
sign,^) as attacked by the sickness which compelled 
him to seek recovery at the hands of Hasisatra, in that 
place whither the gods had transported him to live 
forever, and at the same time as losing his friend and 
counsellor, Ea-bani, the man-bull, struck down by the 

even when Hipparchus wrote his Greek commentary on that poet, 
the Greek Zodiac did not as yet include the sign of Libra ; the 
constellation of the Scorpion, which occupies 41° in the heavens, 
was reckoned as two signs, one formed by the body of the animal, 
the other by its claws, the latter filling the place subsequently 
occupied by Libra (Letronne, Sur V origine du Zodiaque grec, p. 
20, extrait du Journal des Savants de 1839 [see that Journal, Sept., 
1839, p. 533. Tr.] ). This was likewise the case among the 
Chaldeans, and positive texts speak of the Scorpion as presiding 
over the eighth month (Fox Talbot in Trans, of the Soc. of Bihl. 
Archeology \ vol. IV., p. 260), and as a double sign (Fr. Lenor- 
mant, Les premieres civilisations, vol. II., p. 68), a statement con- 
firmed by the cylinders, whereon we find two Scorpions, and not 
one alone, figured at the same time as zodiacal emblems (Lajard, 
Culte de Nithra, pi. liii., No. 3, and lxii., No. 4). This agrees 
with the mythologic conception of the two man-scorpions who 
guard the sunrise and the sunset (G. Smith, Chaldsean Account of 
Genesis, p. 248 [Revised Ed., p. 259. Tr.] ), an arrangement 
which must necessarily have resulted in placing one of the two 
at the equinoctial point of the Ecliptic. 

( l ) It seems to me incontestable that the fragments of the tab- 
lets or songs of the Epopee of Uruk, reckoned by George Smith 
(Chaldsean Account of Genesis, chap, xv.) as the viiith and ixth, 
should belong to cantos vii. and viii., and that the lamented 
English Assyriologist made up his xth Tablet of fragments, which 
in the original belonged to two different tablets or cantos, the 
ixth and xth. We used this restoration in our analysis of the 
poem (p. 243, note 4) above. 

18 



274 The Beginnings of History. 

poisoned prick of a gad-fly (utbuhku). In the chro- 
nology of the Bundehesh the remainder of the millen- 
nium, thus initiated, is filled by the birth of Mashya 
and Mashyana, by their first descendants and the 
reign of Yima, formerly being given up entirely to 
Yima,^) while he was still regarded as the first man. 
The millennium of the sign of the Scorpion is occu- 
pied with the reign of Azhi-Dahaka, terrestrial per- 
sonification of the evil principle. That of Sagittarius 
opens with the defeat of this tyrant by Thraetaona, the 
armed and fighting hero, and ends with the prophetic 
mission of Zarathustra. The last three millenniums 
of Capricornus, Aquarius, and Pisces comprise the 
yet unfinished period of time posterior to the Re- 
vealer of the Law, so that for a Chaldsean of the a<re 
of JSTabu-kudurri-ucur (Nebuchadnezzar), or a cotem- 
porary of the Seleucides like Berossus, the duration 
of the mythical post-diluvian ages, and of the authen- 
tically historic times following, had not yet exhausted 
the period of 43,200 years corresponding to the last 
month of the year and to the last sign of the. Zodiac. 
We have determined the cyclic character and the 
origin of the sum total assigned to the age of the 
human race anterior to the deluge by Chaldee tra 
v 'clition. This total number does not offer itself to us 
in ten equal parts ; in the detailed figures which give 
the duration of each reign, the reigns are unequal. 
But it should be remarked that, although an exact 
mathematical relation between the two orders of num- 
bers be lacking, a certain connection may be proved 

(!) Yesht, XVII., 30. 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 275 

between the inequality of the reigns and the ine- 
quality of the space occupied in the heavens by the 
constellations which have given their names to the 
corresponding solar mansions. The longest reigns 
coincide with the largest constellations, as fol- 
lows : 

Taurus . . 35° in measurement — Adoros ... 10 sars reign. 
Leo . . .36° " — Ammenon . 12 " " 

Virgo . . 48° " — Amegalaros .18 " " 

Scorpio . 41° " — Edoreschos . 18 " " 

Aquarius .39° " — - Xisutnros .18 " " 

On the other hand, Capricornus, which only occu- 
pies 23°, corresponds with the reign, eight sars long, 
of Obartes; Sagittarius — 27° — with the 10 sars long 
reign of Amempsinos. It is true indeed that the 
following figures seem to controvert this general 
rule: 

Gemini . 24° in measurement — Alaparos . . 3 sars reign. 
Cancer . . 19° " — Amillaros .13 " 

But here we may imagine an inversion of numbers 
between the two reigns, or a faulty division made by 
some recorders at second hand in the sum total of 
16 sars for the two reigns together, a number which 
accords well enough with the proportion of the other 
numbers on the list. 

We are lacking in too many of the necessary ele- 
ments for the exact solution of the problem to be 
able to arrive at any but approximate results^ 1 ) 

( l ) There is a really serious objection to the conjecture stated 
above, and we have no desire to weaken its force, namely, that in 
the astronomic and astrologic tablets, so far known to us, isolated 
stars are always referred to, several hundreds of these being men- 
tioned, each one designated by an individual name ; but there 



VJ 



276 The Beginnings of History. 

has never yet been discovered the vestige of a mention of a con- 
stellation formed of several stars. Likewise, in collating that 
which we read in the indigenous documents, and what has been 
preserved by Diodorus of Sicily (II., 80), on the subject of the 
manner in which the Chaldees divided the zodiacal belt, it is 
evident that there is reference to a chief star, giving its name to 
each sign, and to three others, chosen to act as its attendants (see 
the third appendix at the end of this volume, A), But there is 
nothing to indicate that a fully developed catasterism was made 
to correspond with each sign, constructed like those which, in 
Greek astronomy, are designated by the same names as the signs. 
On the other hand, by forming, in the series of antediluvian 
kings, groups of- seasons, to which should be added the figures of 
the reigns after the following "manner, and by admitting besides 
an interchange of numbers between Alaparos and Amillaros, a 
construction would be obtained which in certain respects is 
remarkable : 

Adoros, ) 00 

Alaparos, } 26 SarS « 

SUMMER SOLSTICE. 

Amillaros, 

Ammenon, ]■ 33 sars. 



Amegalaros, 

AUTUMNAL EQUINOX. 

Daonos, 

Edoreschos, [ 38 sars. 



! 



Amempsinos, 

WINTER SOLSTICE. 

Obartes, ) „ 

Xisuthros, } 26sarS ' 

Once established thus, this construction seems the reflex of 
a theory of the inequality, or, as the ancients called it, of the 
anomaly of the Sun, which makes the length of the different 
seasons unequal, a still more imperfect theory than that of Eu- 
doxius (with which we are acquainted through a papyrus in the 
Louvre : Notices et extraits des manuscrits, vol. XVIII. , 2d Part, p. 
74 et seq.), but resembling it in a common error, the exaggeration 
of the interval between the autumnal equinox and the winter 
solstice, considered as the longest season of the year, Hipparchus, 
on the contrary, subsequently discovering it to be the shortest. 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 277 

It is probable, in fact it seems certain, that the 
Biblical numbers for the antediluvian period must 
have possessed a cyclic character equally with those 
accepted by the Chaldseans, and those which we find 
in the Mazdean cosmogony. It would not be pos- 
sible to accept with any show of reason a chronologic 
revelation of divine origin, specially the revelation of 
a chronology the true text of which is unknown to 
us, which comes handed down to us in a singularly 
corrupted state, with variations which pass far be- 
yond all ordinary limits in similar cases. The figures 
in Genesis must consequently be considered from a 
purely human standpoint, like those of any other 
book, weighed in the same balance of criticism. 
And, moreover, however remarkable may have been 
the memory of the ancients, during those ages when 
they did not as yet possess the art of writing, it is 
impossible to imagine that they could have preserved 
so exact a record of the age of the first men( 1 ), at an 
epoch too when human speech did not even possess a 
terminology to express so considerable a lapse of 
time. 

We are thus forcibly impelled to refuse all historic 
character to the figures of longevity ascribed by the 

(i) Knobel {Die Genesis, 2d Ed., p. 69 [3d Ed., by Dillmann, 
p. 120. Tr.] ) has entirely refuted those writers who have 
attempted to cut down to proportions humanly probable the 
lives of the antediluvian patriarchs, by supposing that the term 
sh&ndh, "year," applies to periods which differ from and are 
much shorter than the year of twelve lunar months of the 
Mosaic law, and the year of 360 days of the Babylonian?, used 
in the Elohist narrative of the Deluge (compare Genesis vii. 11 
and 24 with viii. 4 and 5). 



278 The Beginnings of History. 

Bible to the antediluvian patriarcns, and simply to 
regard them as cyclic numbers. But, as Noeldeke( 1 ) 
has judiciously remarked, these numbers are at the 
present writing so uncertain that the really scientific 
study of them is almost impossible. We do not pos- 
sess a single really ancient manuscript, or one belong- 
ing to a family unconnected with the three versions of 
the canonical Hebrew text, which is followed by the 
Latin Vulgate, the Greek of the Septuagint, and the 
Samaritan text. And these three versions differ very 
materially the one from the other, and in these di- 
vergences St. A ugustine ( 2 ) does not hesitate to recog- 
nize, as science has been compelled to do to-day, the 
trace of artificial and systematic alterations. These 
alterations, as every one is agreed in admitting, the 
rigorously orthodox, no less than the rationalistic 
thinker,( 3 ) were the result of the scruples aroused by 
the relatively enormous figures of the original text, 
which, however, never appears to have gone so far 
as to accept the vast periods of the Chaldeans. 
Perhaps these primitive figures may have been pre- 
served to us in those which Genesis, as we possess it, 
has recorded as being the total duration of the life of 
\J each of the patriarchs, a point upon which the three 

(!) Untersuchungen zuv Kritik des Alien Testaments, p. 110. 

( 2 ) Be Civ. Dei, xv., 13, 1. 

( 3 ) It is needless to say that I refer here only to scholars, 
among whom the Church, by the grace of God, claims a goodly 
number. The number of narrow and half enlightened minds, 
who consider themselves compelled to defend as a dogma the 
system of 4004 years from the Creation to the Christian era, is 
continually on the decrease. 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 279 

versions are almost exactly agreed^ 1 ) a proof that 
there lias been much less remodeling done here than 
elsewhere. By adding these together we obtain a 
total of 8575 years according to the Hebrew text, 
8551 according to the Septuagint, which differs by 
very little (65 years in the case of the Hebrew 
figures) from the fiftieth part of the number of 
years adopted by the Chaldseans, or 144 sosses or 
cycles of 60 years.( 2 ) 

(!) See these figures : 

Hebreio. Septuagint. Samaritan. 

Adam 930 930 930 

Sheth 912 912 912 

Enosh 905 905 905 

Qenan 910 910 910 

Mahalal'ed 895 895 895 

Yered 962 962 847 

Hanok 365 365 365 

Methushelah 969 969 720 

Lemek . . '. 777 753 653 

Noah, to the Deluge , . 600 600 600 

The agreement is complete between the three versions until we 
come to Mabalal'el. It continues to the end between the Hebrew 
and Septuagint, save for a slight difference in the life of Lemek. 
The Samaritans systematically curtailed the existences of Yered, 
Methushelah and Lemek so as to make them come to an end 
contemporaneously in their chronological system, immediately 
before the Deluge. 

( 2 ) It is quite a remarkable circumstance that this figure of 
8640 years, or 144 sosses, gives another cyclic number in the 
peculiar system of Chaldeo-Babylonian numeration, 12 periods of 
12 sosses of 60 years each, or the 60th part of the totality of the 
grand revolution of 518,400 years, the result of 12 periods of 12 
sars of 60 sosses each. If this figure were that given primitively 
in the Bible, a cycle must have been regarded as entirely com- 
pleted between the creation of man and the Deluge, while the 
system which had prevailed among the Chaldseans regarded the 



280 The Beginnings of History. 

If, as I should be inclined to admit (an hypothe- 
sis ( -1 ) first suggested by Ernest von Bunsen), these 
figures of the total duration of the life of the first 
patriarchs, which appear to have been but little 
altered, and between which the agreement is most com- 
plete, give by their addition the primitive number of 
Genesis for the period of the antediluvian age, we shall 
be obliged to attribute the construction of the gene- 
alogy, as it has come down to us, to an early work of 
curtailment. In the first place, it gives the age at 
which each one of the patriarchs had the son born to 
him in whom the line was carried on ; after that we 
have the total length of his life, of which the smaller 
part is thus reckoned in the succession of time. 
Thus Adam becomes the father of Sheth at the age of 
130 years, and lives 800 years after that; Sheth begets 
Enosh at 105 years of age, and lives thereafter 815 
years ; Enosh begets Qenan at 90, and lives thereafter 
815 years; the three generations of Adam, Sheth, 
and Enosh count only for 325 years instead of 2747, 

same phase in the history of the world as having only included 
5-6th of a cycle of the order immediately superior. On one hand 
we have 60X12X12, on the other 60 / X 12x10. Otherwise we 
VJ have not, so far, any certain record of the antiquity of the figures 
preserved by Berossus, as known in Chaldea ; but it is highly pro- 
bable that with the Chaldseans, as among the Hindus, the cyclic 
numbers were gradually added to as time went on ; that in the 
construction which we think we have restored with positive 
accuracy, the use of a period of 8640 years may have preceded 
that of the period 60 times greater than 518,400 years, becomes a 
historic possibility. If this was the case, Genesis must have pre- 
served for us the traces of a form of Chaldeean calculation more 
ancient than that which Berossus put into the Greek during the 
time of the Seleucides. 

(!) The Chronology of the Bible, London, 1874. 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 281 

and so on. As Philippe Berger has justly ob- 
served^ 1 ) "One would suppose that the Israelite, by 
systematically abridging the length of the patriarchal 
succession, designedly cut short those endless geneal- 
ogies which were neither more nor less than cosmo- 
gonies like those of Berossus and Sanchoniathon, 
thus combatting the polytheism of which they were 
the constant source. We still find at the beginning 
of the Christian era this struggle against genealogies 
in the writings of St. Paul, the inheritor in- this con- 
nection of the prophetic tradition, and the adversary 
of gnosticism." We may be not far wrong in con- 
cluding that about the epoch of the Captivity, when 
the Hebrews had become familiar with those fabu- 
lous periods born of the speculative imagination of 
the Chaldaeans, they grew scrupulous in regard to 
the figures in their own books, desiring to react 
against the possible danger of an analogous attraction, 
and hastened to curtail their primitive chronology in 
order that it might not stretch out indefinitely, like 
that of the Gentiles. 

However that may be, the divergence between the 
three versions of the Hebrew, Greek, and Samaritan 
Genesis becomes absolute, when it comes to the par- 
tial figures reckoning the existence of each patriarch 
up to the birth of his eldest son, and to the general 
figure of their total result. The most ancient system of 
the three appears undoubtedly to be that preserved in 
the Hebrew text.( 2 ) It reckons 1656 years from the 

(!) Article Genealogies in the Protestant Encyclopedic des sciences 
rSligieuses. 

2 ) On this point see Raschka, Die Chronologic der Bibel im 
Einklange mit der Zeitrechnung der Egypter und Assyrier, a. 2-10. 



282 The Beginnings of History. 

creation of Adam to the Deluge. Oppert, in an 
exceedingly ingenious, I might almost say too inge- 
nious work/ 1 ) has perforce come to the conclusion 
that this figure is derived from that of the Chaldsean 
tradition, as given by Berossus, and that it was 
managed by making one week stand for five years of 
the Chaldeo Babylonians. In fact, says the eminent 
Assyriologist, "the two numbers 432,000 and 1656, 
divisible by 72, are as 6000 to 23 But 23 years 
are 8400 clays, or 1200 weeks. ( 2 ) Thus 6000 years 
were equivalent to 1200 weeks; thus a lustrum, five 
years, 60 months (or one soss of months), was equiva- 
lent to a Biblical week." This concordance is of the 
most seductive character, yet on reflection a doubt 
suggests itself to the mind. These calculations of 
weeks take, in fact, for their basis the tropic year 
of 365J days,( 3 ) and they would cease to be exact if 
the lunar year of 354 days were employed, the only 
year of which a trace is found in the Biblical books, 
or the Chaldeo-Babylonian year of 360. The first- 
named would give for 23 years 8142 days or 1163 
weeks/ 4 ) and for 1656 years 83,746 weeks ;( 5 ) the 

\J (*) Annates de philosophie chretienne, 1877, p. 237 et seq. ; La 
Chronologie de la Genese, Paris, 1878. 

( 2 ) Exactly 8400.57 days or 1200.08 weeks with the true astro- 
nomic year, 8400.75 days or 1200.10 weeks with the tropic year 
of 865^ days, the only year with which the ancients had become 
familiar. 

( 3 ) The absolutely exact figure for 1656 years would be 86,407 
weeks and 5 days. But in a calculation of this kind it' would be 
perfectly natural to reduce it to the round number 86,400. 

(*) Exactly 1163 weeks and one day. 
( 5 ) Exactly 83,746 weeks and two days. 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 283 

second for 23 years 8280 days or 1182 weeks^ 1 ) and 
for 1656 years 85,165 weeks.( 2 ) 

But whatever may have been its origin, the 
reduction of the antediluvian age to 1656 years by 
means of the process, the use of which has been 
proved in the Hebrew text of Genesis, though leav- 
ing the total figures of the patriarchal lives unmo- 
dified, has brought about an accumulation of the 
most curious improbabilities. Adam, in consequence, 
dies only 122 years before the birth of Noah, and 
Sheth 10 years previous to the same event, and 
when Noah himself dies, Abraham is already 58 
years old.( 3 ) The authors of the Alexandrian ver- 
sion, called the Septuagint, desired to find some 
remedy for the improbability of a chronology which 
many by that time had begun to accept literally. 
In order to accomplish this they had recourse to a 
remodeling of the Hebrew figures, so evident and so 
systematic that St. Augustine said, even in his time, 
nee casum redolet sed industriam, and he questioned its 
good faith( 4 ) while attributing the act to a more recent 
interpolate!', out of respect for the memory of the 
translators and for the legend which represented them 
as miraculously inspired. ( 5 ) As the great Bishop of 

(i) Exactly 1182 weeks and six days. 

( 2 ) Exactly 85,165 weeks and five days. 

( 3 ) As to Shem, the figures of the Hebrew text make him die in 
the time of Ya'aqob, thirty-five years after the death of Abraham. 

(*) De civit. Dei, xv., 18, 1-3. 

( 5 ) Nam Septuayinta interpretes, laudabiliter celebratos viros, non 
potuisse mentiri. . . . Credibilius ergo quis dixerit, cum primum 
de bibliotheca Ptolemaei describi ita coeperunt, tunc aliquid tale fieri 



284 The Beginnings of History. 

Hippo has perceived, the process here employed 
consists essentially in the addition of 100 years to all 
the numbers given in the Hebrew text for the exist- 
ence of each patriarch up to the birth of his first son, 
save in the case of Methushelah, whose age was cut 
short by the figure of 20 years, and of Lemek, to 
whose years but six were added. In this wise they 
reached the number of 2242 years ( x ) for the total 
duration of the antediluvian epoch, which may be 
reasonably considered as the result of a premeditated 
idea. In fact, as Abbe Yigouroux ( 2 ) was the first to 

potuisse in codiee uno, scilicet primitus inde descripto, unde jam lathis 
emanaret, ubipotuit quidem accidere etiam scriptoris error. 

(*) If the Seventy sought to avoid certain improbable state- 
ments of the Hebrew figures, they fell, in their turn, into a much 
stranger impossibility. According to their numbers, Methu- 
shelah must have survived the date of the Deluge by fourteen 
years, from which it is not, however, stated that he escaped. Hence 
the correction to be seen in certain manuscripts, of which St. 
Augustine speaks (Be civit. Dei, xv., 13, 3; cf. Quaest. in Hep- 
tateuch., I., 2), which was adopted by Julius Africanus and by 
St. Epiphanius (Adv. hseres., I., 4), which restores to Methushelah 
the Hebrew figure 187 years, instead of 167, giving thus a total of 
2262. The Jewish chronologer Demetrius, who wrote under 
Ptolemy Philopater (Clem. Alex. Stromat. , I., 21), accepted 
\j almost the same result, 2264 years (Euseb., Prsepar. evangel., IX., 
21, sub fin.) ; but we no longer possess his detailed figures. FJa- 
vius Josephus, in his Jeioish Antiquities, has adopted the numbers 
of the Septuagint as far as Yered in combination with those of the 
Hebrew text for Hanok, Methushelah and Lemek, obtaining thus 
a total of 2156 years, almost the same as Clemens Alexandrinus 
(Stromat., I., 21, 23), who gives the figure of 2148 years, without, 
however, stating the manner of its division among the different 
patriarchs. 

( 2 ) La Bible et les decouvertes modernes en Palestine, en figypte et 
en Assyrie, 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 212 et seq. 



Antediluvian Patriarchs. 285 
perceive, tl sum ^ 
vian period- u Tr d-uieuim- 

ans, make 222^°^ f the Chald»- 
tains 222 (correct ^ for the sar con- 
years and six mon° m 7^ u 7 ale ^ to 18 
is here assimilated ^ *° whlch the sar j 

return of the lunar ecY the c ^ cle of the , 

being equivalent to 18 I ^ odlc montl is 
11 days 7 hours and 43 l 65 * <% s ; phs 3 

of which is unanimously the discovery 1 

the Chaldseans ;( 2 ) and the fo anti( l ui ty to 3 

appears is quite as evidently J. statement ^f 

only by using the Jewish year or t° r it is ^^ly ev f_ 
in question is found to correspol 1 ^ - 
days (+19 hours and 43 minuted' 213 
bers with 18 J years. Multiplied' im ~ 
ber of sars accepted by Chalda3an im " 
Berossus made familiar, this round J 
giv^ 2220 years ; but should the exaci 
j .Sj cycle of 223 synodic months be multi x 
o£ 2232 lunar years of 354 days (+170 di. 
hours) is obtained. The idea of substituting 
sars of 3600 years an erudite astronomic 
known to be of Chaldsean origin, shows an amo 
subtlety which bears the unmistakable mark o 
Alexandrian mind. It is true that there alway. 
mains the difference of ten or twenty years betw 

ie 
( 2 ) At the word capoi. 

( 2 ) Ptolem., Almagest., IV. [cap. 2], p. 215, ed. Halma ; Gemin., 

Elem. Astron., 15, p. 62, ed. Petav. ; Pliny, Hist. Nat., II., 10; 

see Ideler, Handbuch der Chronologic, vol. I., p. 206. 



286 The Beginnings of History-^ 

the result of this multiplication by feof the cycle 
of the return of the lunar eclipses, f irhe total figure 
°iven by the Septuagint version/texi* antediluvian 
period, according to the more ^irth™ J definition 

F ' i 7~ 1™ mnltinJfah w x - is Hist here that 

of the number to be multipaan, v J 

4-1. of inrliKitr Vears 'aslutta, with which 
we recognize that wictusw years. > 

,- ^^v^anVv adfWuthors of the figures 
St Augustine reproach aa <~ier & 

' , ^ i rt Jai'nn 2242 Addition of 20 or of 10 
of the Greek version *•;** . 

i-x x. «K/iilnviawffht alteration m number 
years constitutes ab'- 11111 ya b 

hich was req- ed as tbne work of dressm S U P 

w .j Abbe V ma y be allowed to use so 

. " £*■ m order to conceal the fact of 

ore maiy , e uno ^ scilicet ^-j e sourcej n ame ly ; Chaldee 

adopto>^ quidem a Ydl gay ^^ ^ great docfc()r 

meL^thtHXewfig^ ^ ^ to > cto «8* ^ iftz 

stranger impossibility. ia.( l ) A sentence of Flavius Jo- 
shelah must have sur,reover, how much stress the Jews 
years, from which it i the idea of a connect i n between 

the correction to > } ,. mi i ti 

Augustine speak ^7 loD g llves ascribed to tire antedilu- 
tateuch., L, 2), chs and the cyclic and astronomic periods. 
St. Epiphanius^t only," he says, " because of their virtue 
2262 G tIT permitted them to live so long, but also in 
Ptolemy 3re st of astrology and geometry, of which they 
almost tlhe inventors, for they would never have been 

21, sub ty establish an exact prognostication if they had 
vius Jo 

of the lve( ^ at ^ east ®®® years, the term of the revolu- 
Hebr-A of the great year."( 2 ) 

a totjf the numbers of the Septuagint version offer us 
systematic prolongation of those of the Hebrew 

(*) St. Augustine, Be civit. Dei, XV., 13, 3. 
( 2 ) Antiq. Jud., I., 3, 9. 



(Str 
ho^ 



» 

The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 287 

text, the numbers of the Samaritan edition, on the 
contrary, all show a curtailment. From the time of 
St. Jerome the best Samaritan manuscripts gave ex- 
actly the same figures as the Hebrew version ;(*) but 
those which finally preponderated in the Samaritan 
Bible existed already in other manuscripts, from 
which Eusebius cites them.( 2 ) They cut oif 100 
years from the life of Yered before the birth of his 
son Hanok, 120 years from Methilshelah's exist- 
ence,^) and 129 from Lemek's. Owing to these 
suppressions, the total duration of the antediluvian 
period is 1307 years. Here again the origin of the 
artificial chronological combination, by means of 
which the curtailment was effected, is perfectly evi- 
dent; but the generating element is no longer drawn 
from foreign sources. It is absolutely Jewish, and 
is the cycle of the Sabbatical years. In fact, accept- 
ing the figure of 1307 years as the correct one from 
the Creation to the Deluge, the birth of Arphakshad, 
that son of Shem from whom the Hebrews were 
descended, two years after the Deluge,( 4 ) falls pre- 
cisely within the 187th Jubilee year after the crea- 
tion of the first man. Furthermore, since the Sa- 
maritan version reckons 1017 years from the Deluge 
to the calling of Abraham, ( 5 ) this last event coincides 

( x ) St. Jerome, Quaest. in Genes., 5, 25. 

( 2 ) Chron. Armen., I., 16, 11. 

( 3 ) Or just 100 years of the number attributed to him by the 
Septuagint. 

( 4 ) Genesis xi. 10. 

( 5 ) 942 years from the Deluge to the birth of Abraham ; see 
Raschka, Die Ckronologie der Bibel, p. 11 et seq. 



\J 



288 The Beginnings of History. 

with the 145th Sabbatic year after the birth of 
Arphakshad, the 332d from the creation of Adam. 
The Jews likewise, in fixing the computation of the 
Era of the World, which they adopted during the 
Middle Ages, selected the figures of the Samaritan 
text for the period before the Deluge in preference 
to those contained in their own Biblical text.( L ) 

It may be perceived that the cyclic computations, 
on which were based those alterations in consequence 
of which the figures of the Septuagint version and of 
the Samaritan rendering were derived from the older 
figures of the Hebrew text, had in view the total 
duration of the antediluvian age. As far as the de- 
tails are concerned, the additions or retrenchments in 
the numbers of this or that patriarch were undoubt- 
edly made after a purely arbitrary fashion, as to 
which should be selected for the purpose. It is quite 
probable that it was equally the case in the first work 
of abridgement of the original numbers in the " Book 
of the Generations of Adam," whence were taken the 
figures of the Hebrew text of Genesis, as we possess 
them. 

There must have been, moreover, certain artificial 
combinations of numbers, the purpose of which we 
are not in a condition to decipher, but the existence of 
which is manifestly implied by the figures connected 
with Hanok. At this point, however, we stumble 
against an absolutely unknown matter. So far we 
know nothing whatever of the subtle speculations, 
altogether strange and complex, on the value of 

(!) Raschka, p. 333. 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 289 

numbers, which were so widely developed among the 
Chaldeo-Babylonians, and had irradiated over the 
larger part of Asia Minor from the Babylonian focus, 
and which at a later date were carried to Rome by 
the astrological Chaldcei, direct, though degenerate, 
disciples of the doctrines of the ancient Chaldaean 
priesthood, at the period when Horace( 1 ) dissuaded 
Leuconoe" from consulting Babylonian numbers, nee 
babylonios tentaris numeros. Among the very numer- 
ous cuneiform documents which Rassam collected for 
the British Museum, as fruits of his last mission to 
Assyria and Babylon, there are several tablets entirely 
filled with numbers of this description, with indica- 
tions of the meaning connected with them. There is 
reason to hope that when they are published and 
have become the objects of scientific study, a corner 
at least of the veil which still enshrouds this side of 
the culture of ancient Asia may be lifted. However, 
we have so far no possible reason for imagining any 
combinations based upon Chaldsean figures as handed 
down to us in the fragments of Berossus, except in 
the artificial reductions of the ancient sum total of 
the Shethite genealogy ; and even then it is only in 
the total substituted by the Septuagint for the total of 
the Hebrew text that there may be seen unquestion- 
ably a systematic curtailing of the figures accepted 
by the Chaldseans as their antediluvian period, a 
curtailing obtained without altering the numeral fac- 
tors in the multiplication, but by substituting as unit 
of time a notably shorter measure. In the matter of 

(i) Od., I., 11, v. 2. 

19 



\J 



290 The Beginnings of History. 

the ancient number, which I think may be discovered 
by adding the full figures of the lives of the ten 
patriarchs, and also as regards the establishing of 
these partial numbers', the critics are obliged to admit 
the possibility of two hypotheses : either the numeral . 
speculations peculiar to the Hebrews, or personally 
to the sacred writers, called by Nceldeke( 1 ) "an exact 
chronology which rests no more upon historic than 
mythic tradition, but results in reality from the 
computations of the narrator;" or else an external 
idea, borrowed from some one beside the Chaldeo- 
Babylonians, possibly some neighbor nation of the 
Hebrews. The 365 years of the life of Hanok do 
not appear in any form in Chaldeean tradition ; never- 
theless, it is difficult not to believe that the record 
came from a nation which assimilated the seventh 
antediluvian patriarch with a solar personification. 
The primitive Tholedoth of the Phoenicians, of which 
we have received only an imperfect notion through 
the mutilated fragments which have come down to 
us under the name of Sanchoniathon — fragments in 
which we have, however, been able to trace numerous 
points of contact with the genealogies of Genesis and 
with the Chaldsean tradition — likewise ascribe to the 
first ancestors of men lives of prodigious length, and 
use cyclic numbers to measure the duration of the 
primordial ages. Joseph us ( 2 ) testifies to the fact, 
calling to witness those Greek writers who had 
specially treated the antiquities of Phoenicia. He 
says, after attempting to prove the necessity for the 

(!) Kritlsche Geschichte des Alten Testaments, p. 11. 
( 2 ) Aniiq. Jud., I., 3, 9. 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 291 

first men having lived longer than the " great year" 
of 600 years, " I have the testimony of all those 
among the Greeks and Romans who wrote on 
antiquities. For Manetho, who composed the annals 
of Egypt; Berossus, who collected the Chaldsean 
traditions ; Mochos, Hestiaios, and also Hieronymus 
the Egyptian, the authors of Phoenician histories, are 
fully in accord with what I say." Unfortunately it 
did not enter into the plan of Josephus to explain the 
primitive Phoenician chronology as given by the 
writers to whom he refers. It merely appears from 
what he says that the numbers for the dynasties 
of the gods, the demigods and the heroes were of 
the same nature as those of Berossus and Manetho. 
For here also we find a series of enormous cyclic 
figures, unrolling their periods before the usher- 
ing in of historic times, properly so called. These 
figures of the mythic Egyptian chronology are 
but imperfectly known to us, so far, too imperfectly 
in fact to warrant us in making any satisfactory state- 
ment as to the principle of their construction ;( x ) those 
of Manetho even having come down to us in an 
uncertain and greatly altered condition ; those of the 
Turin papyrus are destroyed ; the only ones on which 
we can reckon with any confidence are those which 

C 1 ) In his book, entitled Manetho und die Hundssternperiode 
(Berlin, 1845), Boeckh has constructed some ingenious theories, 
though resting upon too insecure a base, to explain cyclically 
Manetho' s numbers. The labors of Bunsen (JEgyptens Stelle in 
der Weltgeschichte, Hamburg and Gotha, 1845-1857 [Eng. Trans., 
London, 1848-1867. Tr.] ), and Lepsius [Chronologie der JEgyptsr, 
Bei-lin, 1849), have added some farther elements to the question, 
but are far from furnishing a certain solution to it. 



292 The Beginnings of History. 

were cut in the walls of the Temple of Edfu,! 1 ) 
during the epoch of the Ptolemies. We shall be 
obliged to await some new discovery, such as a royal 
canon similar to that of Turin, but in good condition, 
before we can venture to undertake a serious investiga- 
tion of the principle of the cyclic periods with which 
the annals of Egypt were made to begin. It is not 
necessary that we should even glance at this very 
obscure question any further. The principle of 
mythical Egyptian chronology was certainly quite 
diiferent from that of the Chaldsean chronology ;( 2 ) 
and it had no influence whatever upon the numbers 
of the Bible, no more indeed than the even more 
immense cyclic periods of the Hindus. Especially 
will we not venture to embark upon the impossible, 
even puerile, attempt which has beguiled some mod- 
ern scholars, and before this led Panadorus into such 
curious theories, to bring down these mythic chrono- 
logies to proportions within the range of probability, 
trying to find history in them, or at the least trace 
back to a common starting point the mythic chrono- 
logies of Egypt and Chaldsea. 

At the conclusion of the remarks we have quoted, 
\J Josephus adds : " Hesiod, Hecatseus, Hellanieos, 
Acousilaos, as well as Ephorus and Nicolas (of Da- 
mascus), every one, relate that the men of antiquity 

( x ) Ed. Naville, Textes relatifs au My the <T Horus, recueillis dans 
le temple oT Edfou, Geneva, 1870. 

( 2 ) The cyclic computations of the Chaldseans are based upon 
the scale of sosses, ners and sars, of 60, 600 and 3600 years ; 
those of the Egyptians on the Sothiac period of 1460 years. This 
last was never known or used in Chaldsea. 



The Ten Antediluvian Patriarchs. 293 

lived 1000 years." The mention of Hesiod is evi- 
dently an allusion to what he says in Works and Days 
(v. 129, 130), about the men of the silver age remain- 
ing for 100 years with their mothers in a state of child- 
hood. Besides this, the theory accepted by Hesiod, 
to which we have already referred in our second 
chapter, concerning the four ages of the world de- 
teriorating as one succeeded the other, would neces- 
sarily suggest the idea of a shortening of human life 
with each age, as we find it expressed in the Laws of 
Manu( 1 ), wherein this decrease is represented by the 
proportion of 4, 3, 2, 1. The other references to the 
archeologists of Greece apply to works which no, 
longer exist; Eusebius( 2 ) and Syncellus( 3 ) also refer 
to them. They evidently treat of narratives( 4 ) like 
those of the Arcadians, who, according to Ephorus,( 5 ) 
made some of their ancient mythic kings, whom they 
called Tzpcj&Xyvoi^ " before the moon," or rather 
"anterior to the reckoning of the lunations," live 300 
years. Hellanicos, after this manner, related how 
those Epseans who had been forced by the tyranny 
of Salmonaeus to emigrate from Elis and to settle in 
iEtolia, lived 200 years during several generations in 
the heroic ages.( 6 ) Damastes of Sigseuni added that 
one of them had even attained to 300 years.( 7 ) Pliny( 8 ) 

(i) L, 68-86. 

( 2 ) Prsepar. evangel., IX., 13, p. 415. 

( 3 ) Chronograph., p. 43. 

(*) See Sturz, Hellanici Lesbii fragmenta, p. 153 et seq. 

( 5 ) Ap Censorin., De die nat., 17. 

( 6 ) Valer. Maxim., VIII., 13, ext, 6; Pliny, Hist. Nat, VII., 
48, 49. 

( 7 ) Ap Valer. Maxim., I. c. ( 8 ) But. Nat., I. c. 



294 The Beginnings of History. 

and Valerius Maximus( 1 ) have collected a certain num- 
ber of analogous examples from all quarters. They 
do not all belong to Greece, and they prove that the 
Illyrians, for instance, on the authority of Cornelius 
Alexander, counted as their ancestor Dathon or Dan- 
don, who lived 500 years without growing old, and that 
the Thynians, according to the Pervplus of Xenophon 
of Lampsacus, headed their royal lists with a prince 
who lived 600 years, a period eclipsed by the 800 years 
of his son's existence. All these are so many witnesses 
to the belief, common to all nations, in an extreme 
longevity among the earliest ancestors of the human 
race. But this belief did not take, and never appears 
to have assumed among the Greeks, a professedly 
exact chronological form of cyclic numbers design- 
edly linked together. It is well to remark, in this 
regard, that Pliny and Valerius Maximus, who had 
access to the same Hellenic authors as Josephus, do 
not appear to have found any reference to those lives 
of 1000 years of which the historian of the Jews 
speaks. 

(!) VIII., 13, ext. 

\J 



^ 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE CHILDREN OF GOD AND THE DAUGHTERS 
OF MEN. 

The course of our studies leads us now to attempt 
the examination of that passage which is truly the 
Crux interpretum of the first part of Genesis. This 
fragment, which, judging from its style and the 
character of its redaction, undoubtedly emanates from 
the Jehovist source, has a foreign air, and one quite 
peculiar to itself. Its mythic coloring is decidedly 
more pronounced than that of any part of the Penta- 
teuch. Without referring to the formidable gram- 
matical difficulties which render doubtful the ex- 
planation of some sentences, where the translations 
most generally adopted are not always the best^ 1 ) 
the strange nature of the facts which one is obliged 
to accept if the story be taken literally, as an actual 
revealed history, has led many commentators to tor- 
ture the text, and deprive it of its natural meaning, 

( x ) The best discussion of the grammatical difficulties is con- 
tained in Schrader's Ueber Sinn und Zusammenhang des Stuckes von 
den Sozhnen Gottes, in Studien zur Kritik und Erklxrung der Bib- 
lischen Urgeschichte (Zurich, 1863), pp. 61-118. I usually adopt 
the same interpretations as this scholar, and his exhaustive phi- 
lological study renders it unnecessary for me to discuss some of 
these points of detail. 

295 



VJ 



296 The Beginnings of History. 

in order to escape from the consequences which that 
would involve. Hence there is no traditional inter- 
pretation for this passage, the constancy and unani- 
mity of which would have any weight with the stu- 
dent of to-day. Tradition has never succeeded in 
taking a fixed stand here; the predominant interpre- 
tation has varied with different epochs, and three 
principal systems, sustained by authorities of equal 
weight, but absolutely divergent among themselves, 
are set forth by Jewish and Christian doctors. For 
this reason criticism grapples with the expressions 
of the text untrammeled by any limitations and free 
to discuss their meanings. 

The fundamental difficulty concerns the true 
meaning of the two expressions, bent, htidohim and 
benoth hddddm, "the sons of God" and the "daugh- 
ters of man/' as designating those two classes of in- 
dividuals, a union between whom is represented by 
the text as impious and unacceptable to God, and 
one of the most active factors in the general corrup- 
tion of humanity, the result of which is to draw 
down upon it the punishment of the Deluge. 

The Targumim, that of Onqelos, as well as that of 
Pseudo-Jonathan, the Greek version of Symmachus, 
the Samaritan version, the Arabic translation of 
Saadiah, as well as that known by the name of Arabs 
Erpeniij understand bent hdelohim, in Genesis vi. 2 
and 4, as signifying "the children of the princes, the 
great ones," who would be degraded by contracting 
marriage with maidens of an inferior rank, to 
whom they applied the term bendth hddddm. This 
interpretation is held by Aben-Ezra and Raschi, and 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 297 

owing to the reputation of these doctors it has become 
general since mediaeval times in the circles of what 
might be known as orthodox Judaism^ 1 ) It has been 
adopted by only a very few Christian theologians of 
modern times, Molina among Catholics, Jean Mercier, 
Varenius, Selden and Conrad Vorst among Protest- 
ants. Quite recently it has been taken up again 
by Schiller ( 2 ) and by Keil.( 3 ) But the overwhelm- 
ing majority of exegetes, rationalistic or orthodox, of 
every communion, reject it; and, in fact, it is inad- 
missible from the philological, as well as from the 
common-sense, point of view, for simple marriages 
of unequal conditions would certainly never be char- 
acterized by the condemnation which the sacred book 
visits upon the unions between " the sons of God " 
and the " daughters of men/' and still less could they 
be described as giving birth to an extraordinary pro- 
geny. It is useless to try and justify such an idea 
by referring to Psalm lxxxii. 6 : 

" I said : Ye are gods, ye are all the children of 
the Most High." 

This passage has nothing in common with that of 



( ! ) On the principal ancient authorities in favor of this opinion 
see Keil, Ueber Genes. VI., 1-4, in Zeitschrift f'tir die lutherische 
Theologie urA Kirche, Rudelbach and Guericke, 1855 ; Delitzsch, 
Commentar uber den Genesis, 3d. Ed., p. 231. [See also 4th Ed., 
1872, pp. 190, 191. Tr.] 

( 2 ) Werke, vol. X., p. 401. \Kleine prosaische Schriften, 6stes 
Buch, " Etwas uber die erste Menschengesellschaft," etc. Tr.] 

( 3 ) In Eudelbach and Guericke' s Zeitschrift, 1855, p. 241. 
Afterwards he abandoned this opinion, Genesis and Exodus, p. 80 
et seq. [2d Ed., 1866, p. 86 et seq. ; Eng. Trans., 1864, p. 127 et 
Beq. Tr.]. 



298 The Beginnings of History. 

Genesis ; here bend 'elidn is a predicate, which may 
even be regarded as implying a comparison with the 
angels, just as the Targumim understood it; it is not 
the proper appellation of a special class of creatures 
like our bent haelohim. At first sight, one is attracted 
by the resemblance to Psalm xlix. 3 [Heb.], where 
the opposition of bend dddm to bend ish certainly 
refers to the mass of common people and to the 
higher classes^ 1 ) But this is really nothing more 
than an application of that opposition, so frequent in 
the Bible, ( 2 ) of the two terms that serve to denote 
the idea of "man," dddm and ish, employed with 
the same delicate shade of meaning as the Greek 
&vd pujTzot; and dv7Jp.( s ) According to this, dddm is 
the most generic name for man ; but it is also true 
that as opposed to elohim, dddm only designates hu- 
manity in its most general and extended accepta- 
tion, and not a special class of men. The dualism of 
the bend haelohim and the bend hddddm is quite a 
different thing from that of the bend dddm and the 
bend ish, and they cannot in any wise be assimilated. 
This interpretation should therefore be absolutely 
discarded, and even more decidedly the new and 
altogether fantastic form, under which Hitter and 
Schumann have tried to reproduce it, which under- 
stands by "sons of God," men having extraordinary 
intellectual gifts "in the image of God." 

(!) Cf. Prov. viii. 4. 

( 2 ) Is. ii. 9; v., 3; cf. Psalm lxxxii. 7; Is. xxix. 21.— On 
the other hand, there are other places where dddm and ish are 
used as synonyms in poetic parallelism : Job. xxxv. 8 ; Is. xxxL 
8 ; lii. 14; Mic. v., 6 ; Psalm lxii. 11 ; 2 Kings vii. 10. 

( 3 ) See Genesius, Thesaur., vol. I., p. 24. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 299 

Of all the systems put forth in explanation of the 
difficult problem which we are investigating, the only 
one having the merit of representing the most ancient 
tradition, the tradition inherited by the early Chris- 
tians from Judaism, would certainly be that which 
accepts for the bent hdelohtm the signification of 
"angels." 

In some of the ancient manuscripts of the Septua- 
gint version, we find in Genesis vi. 2 and 4, ayyzlot 
too dsobj instead of uloi to 7 ) dsou/y 1 ) and this would 
seem to have been undoubtedly the original text of 
the Alexandrian translators. Besides this, all the 
most ancient Fathers of the Church, as St. Justin, 
Tatian, Athenagoras, Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertul- 
lian, St. Cyprian and Lactantius, as well as, sub- 
sequently, St. Ambrose and Sulpicius Severus, read- 
ing the Bible in the Greek, and therein finding this 
expression, regard with wonder the circumstance re- 
lated in Genesis of the culpable unions between the 
angels descended upon earth and the daughters of 
men. This is also the interpretation adopted by 
Philo,( 2 ) Josephus,( 3 ) and the author of the Book of 
Jubilees,^) among the Jews, as well as by the Judseo- 
Christian Theodotion.( 5 ) It is developed under the 
form of a complete and highly poetic narrative in the 

(i) St. Augustine, De civ. Dei, XV., 23. 

(2) DegiganL, 2, p. 358, ed. Mangey. 

(3) Antiq. Jud., I., 3, 1. 

( 4 ) Liber Jubilseorum sethiopice, ed. Dillmann (Kiel, 1859), VII., 
p. 31. See the translation given by Dillmann in Ewald's Jahr- 
bilcher, vol. II., p. 248. 

( 5 ) St. Jerome says that if Theodotion had written viol tov deov, 
it would be deos intelligens angelos sive sanctos. 



\J 



300 The Beginnings of History. 

Book of Enoch,^) one of the most remarkable of the 
non-canonical Jewish apocalyptic writings. Accord- 
ing to this book, the angels to whom God had com- 
mitted the guardianship of the Earth, the Egregors( 2 ) 
or Vigilants, allowing themselves to be beguiled by 
the beauty of the women, fell with them into the sin 
of fornication, which forever shut them out from hea- 
ven, begetting a race of giants 3000 cubits in height, 
as well as numerous demons.( 3 ) This story of the fall 
of the Egregors is accepted, and related with further 
detail by Tertullian,( 4 ) Commodian( 5 ) and Lactan- 
tius.( 6 ) And this is not all; at least one positive 
passage in the New Testament occurs to the Christian 

(!) Liber Henochi sethiopice, ed. Dilluiann (Leipzig, 1851), 
translation by the same [Das Buck Henoch, Leipzig, 1853), VI., 
VII. , XII., 4; XV., 2etseq. 

( 2 ) This is a term employed by Aquila and Symmachus as a 
translation of the Aramaic 'ir of Daniel (iv. 13 et seq ), applied 
sometimes to good guardian angels (especially to the archangels 
in the Syriac Liturgy), sometimes to evil angels and demons (Cas- 
tel., Lexic. Syriac, p. 649 ; Scaliger, Ad. Euseb. Chron., p. 403 ; 
Genesius, Thesaur., vol. II., p. 1006). 

( 3 ) In the later Jewish Hagadah this tradition gives rise to a 
number of episodic histories, like that of the fall of the angels, 
Shamchozai and 'Azazel, published by Jellinek in his Midrasch 
abchir The Bereschith rabbah (on Genes, vi. 2) reckons 'Azazel 
as among the worst of the angels corrupted by association with 
women, and degenerated to demons. It makes him the inventor 
of excessive finery in attire and of rouge, and associates him with 
that 'Azazel who is mentioned in Leviticus xvi. 8. See again 
Bochart, Hierozo'icon, 1. II., c. liv., vol. I., p. 652 et seq., London 
edition, 1663 ; Sennert, Dissertatio historico-philologica de gigantibus 
(Wittenberg, 1663), chap. iii. 

(*) De cult.femin., I., 2 ; II., 10. 

( 5 ) Instruct., III., Gultus daemonum. 

( 6 ) Div. instit., II., 14; Testam. patriarch., 5. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 301 

in support of a like understanding of the text of 
Genesis. The Epistle of St. Jude, which rests upon 
the Book of Enoch, and clearly borrows from it in 
verses 14 and 15, speaks of this sin of_the angels, and 
compares their fornication with the crime of Sodom 
and Gomorrah (v. 6 and 7), and it is probable that 
St. Peter alludes to the same story in his second 
epistle^ 1 ) 

But subsequently the Christian doctors were seized 
with scruples in regard to the consequences which 
might follow upon the interpretation hitherto accept- 
ed in the matter of the "sons of God." It was 
supposed to contradict the words of Christ, which 
deny sex to the angels. ( 2 ) Dating from the fourth 
century, this view was generally condemned. St. 
Cyril of Alexandria ( 3 ) declares it absurd to the 
last degree, dzon cox arov ; Theodoret( 4 ) thinks that any 
one who holds to such an opinion must have lost his 
senses. Philaster calls it heretical, ( 5 ) and St. John 
Chrysostom blasphemous. ( 6 ) Such severe language 
in reference to an opinion which had been accepted 
by all the fathers of the first centuries is a little 

(!) II., 4. Taken by itself, the verse might be understood to 
refer, as is often supposed, to the primitive fall of the rebel angels, 
which is clearly referred to in 1 Tim. iii. 6. But the whole con- 
text is rather of a nature to suggest an allusion to Genesis Jf'\. 1-4 ; 
for the verse in question is immediately followed (v. 5) by a refer- 
ence to the deluge, which seems to follow as a consequence of the 
crime of the angels ; then comes (v. 6) the same comparison with 
the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah as in St. Jude, 

(2) Matth. xxii. 30 ; Mark xii. 25 ; Luke xx. 34-36. 

( 3 ) Contr. Julian., 9. ( 4 ) Quaest. in Genes., 47. 

(5) Be haeres., 108 [ed. Migne ; 80, ed. Galland. Tr.]. 

( 6 ) Romil. xxii. in Genes. 



302 The Beginnings of History. 

surprising, and shows how much Christian opinion 
had changed regarding the meaning of the passage in 



The most generally accepted interpretation, begin- 
ning with the fourth century, supposes the " sons of 
God" to be the descendants of Sheth, upon whom 
this title was bestowed as belonging to the chosen 
race, which until that period was faithful to a worship 
of truth, and the " daughters of man" to be the 
women of the line of Qain. This view appears for 
the first time in the romance of the Pseudo-Clemen- 
tine Recognitiones, associated with a complete Ebio- 
nite system wherein the opposition of the sons of 
God to the daughters of man is the prototype of the 
antagonism between Peter and Paul. The first 
orthodox writer who seems to. have accepted it is 
Julius Africanus, in his Chronicon,( l ) written during 
the first half of the third century. But subse- 
quently it became the interpretation which counted 
for its adherents among the Orientals, St. Ephrem, 
and the author of the Christian Book of Adam;^) 
in the Greek Church, Theodoret,( 3 ) St, Cyril,( 4 ) St. 
John Chrysostom ;( 5 ) in the Latin Church, St. Au- 

V (i) See his text in Routh, Reliquise, vol. II., p. 127. 

( 2 ) Translated by Dillmann in Ewald's Jahrbucher, vol. V., pp. 
1-144- The author of the Book of Adam even makes a polemic 
against the partisans of the opinion that the bene haelohim were 
angels (p. 100). 

The whole of the romance which oriental Christians finally wove 
about this tradition is given in Abu-1-Faradj {Histor. dynast., pp. 
7 and 8, ed. Pococke). Cf. again Suidas, v. 2?)d and /uiatyafiiat ; 
Cedren., Histor. compend., p. 18. 

(3) Quaest. in Genes., 47. (*) Contr. Julian., 9. 
( 5 ) Ilomil. xxii. in Genes. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 303 

gustine^ 1 ) and St. Jerome. All these are very great 
authorities, and it is not really surprising that the 
Catholic theologians of the Middle Ages should have 
generally followed them, while at the same time 
Moses Maimonides among the Jews( 2 ) adopted the 
same interpretation. The reformers of the sixteenth 
century, Luther, Melancthon and Calvin ? ( 3 ) ranged 
their opinions on the same side. And even in our 
own days it has found conscientious defenders, able 
and most learned, in Havernick,( 4 ) Ebrard,( 5 ) Hengs- 
tenberg,( 6 ) Kahnis,( 7 ) Bunsen,( 8 ) and specially Keil,( 9 j 
who carries on a most lively polemic on this subject 
against his colleague Kurtz.( 10 ) 

Nevertheless, this understanding of the text seems 

(!) De civit. Dei, xv. 23. ( a ) 3forS nebouchtm, i. 14. 

( 3 ) Calvin even .«ays : Vetus Mud commentum de angelorum concu- 
bitu cum mulieribus sua absurditate abunde refellitur, ac mirum est 
dodos viros tarn chassis et prodigiosis deliriis fuisse olim fascinates. 

( 4 ) Einleitung ins Alte Testament, vol. I., 2d Part, p. 216. 

( 5 ) Chrisiliche Dogmatik, vol. I., p. 286. 

( 6 ) Die Scehne Gottes und die Tcechter der Menschen in the Evan- 
gelische Kirchenzeitung , 1858, Nos. 29 and 35-37; Beit-rage zur 
Einleitung in das Alte Testament, vol. II., p. 328 et seq. 

( 7 ) Luther. Dogmatik. vol. I., p 246. 

( 8 ) Bibelwerk, 2d Part, p. 18; Bibelurkunden, vol. I., p. 53. 

( 9 ) Die Ehen der Kinder Gottes mit den Tozchtern der Menschen in 
Rudelbach and Guericke's Zeitschrift fur die lutherische Theologie 
und Kirche, 1855, pp. 220-256; Der Fall der Engel (Jud. 6 and 2 
Pet. ii. 4), in the same review, 1856, pp. 21-37. 

( 10 ) The writings of Kurtz on this question are : Die Ehen der 
Sozhne Gottes mit den Tozchtern der Menschen, Berlin, 1857; Die 
Scehne Gottes in 1 Mos. VI., 1-4, und die sundigenden Engel in 2 
Pet. ii. 4-5 und Jude 6, 7, Mitau, 1858. 

See also Engelhardt, Die Ehen der Kinder Gottes mit den Tozchtern 
der Menschen, in Rudelbach and Guericke's Zeitschrift, 1856, pp. 
401-412. 



304 The Beginnings of History. 

to me out of accord with its own expressions, and 
the intrinsic philological reasons brought to bear 
against it by the most able Hebraists of our cen- 
tury are to my mind most convincing. Doubtless, 
Schrader to the contrary notwithstanding,^) my 
ideas on this point being absolutely at variance 
with his, the opposition of the accursed and blessed 
lives among the descendants of Adam, the respec- 
tive families of Qain and Sheth, is at the very basis 
of the Biblical conception of antediluvian times, as 
1 think I have proved in the foregoing chapters. 
This opposition was, from the beginning of the 
world, a type of that existing between Yisrael and 
the profane peoples surrounding it. One of the 
points which is most insisted upon in the Thorah 
is the maintenance of the absolute race-purity of 
the chosen people, the prevention of marriages with 
unbelieving strangers, a constant source of physical 
and moral corruption. In the system of ideas which 
prevails throughout the Bible, it would have been 
natural enough to represent the conjugal alliance 
between the Shethites and the Qainites as being no 
less displeasing to God than the union between the 
sons of Yisrael and the daughters of the heathen 
nations, as having been the chief cause of the irre- 
mcdial corruption of the hitherto blessed race. And 
iu fact there can be no doubt that verses 1-4 in 
the sixth chapter of Genesis, Avhile treating of a 
general perversion of humanity, lay special stress 

(*) Studien zur Kritik and Erklserung dcr biblischen Urgeschichte, 
p. 65. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 305 

upon that epoch when a corruption as fatal as that 
of the accursed race attacked the descendants of the 
righteous son, who, though doubtless subjected 
equally with the other to the bondage of sin by the 
fault of the first father of humanity, had preserved a 
greater degree of purity for several generations, and 
alone had " begun to invoke by the name of Yah- 
veh."^) In this way the story told in these verses 
stands forth as one of the causes which bring on the 
reprobation of the whole human race, except the 
righteous Noah, drawing down upon it the chastise- 
ment of the an^er of heaven. 

It may easily be understood how an interpretation 
which accords so well with the general spirit of the 
Pentateuch might have been adopted, especially by 
those who laid no particular stress upon analysing 
the letter of the text, word for word, in its Hebrew 
version. But with this last view of it the interpre- 
tation of bend hdelohtm and benoth hddddm, as sons 
of Sheth and daughters of Qain, becomes untenable. 
The defenders of it have, in order to justify it, called 
to their aid some poetic passages in which the 
righteous, and especially Yisrael, are represented 
metaphorically as the children of God. It is in this 
wise that Psalm lxxiii. 15, invoking God, reads : 

" If I said : I will speak as they (the wicked) 
behold, I would betray the race of Thy children." 

And Deuteronomy xiv. 1 and 2 : 

" Ye are the children of Yahveh, your God ; ye 
must not cut yourselves, and ye must not shave 



( 1 ) Genesis iv, 26. 

2J u 



\J 



306 The Beginnings of History. 

yourselves between the eyes in honor of a dead 
man.f) 

" For thou art a holy people for Yahveh, thy 
God; and Yahveh, thy God, hath chosen thee that 
thou shouldest be a people belonging to Him above 
all the peoples that are on the face of the earth." 

Again, in the Song of Mosheh, Deuteronomy 
xxxii. 4 and 5 : 

" He is the rock : His work is irreproachable, 

for all His ways are righteous ; 

a faithful God, and without iniquity, 

He is just and upright. 

" That which has corrupted before Him those who 
are no longer His children, 

is their own unworthiness, 

a false and perverse race." 

And a little further on (v. 19) : 

"Yahveh saw it, and was provoked, angered 
against his sons and his daughters." 

Finally, Psalm lxxx. [Heb.] 16 thus addresses 
Yahveh, in speaking of Yisrael : 

" Protect that which Thy right hand hath planted, 
and the son whom Thou hast chosen for Thyself." 

But these passages, and some others which might 
be cited in addition, all belong to a very much later 
epoch than the revision of the Jehovist document of 
the Pentateuch, or even of Genesis, and the style 
is absolutely different. The metaphors of lyric 
poetry are very far removed from an appellation of 
an exact and specific character, such as the bend 
hdelohim of our text, above all from such an appel- 

(!) Alluding to the pagan rites of mourning for Tammuz-Adonis. 



Children of God and, Daughters of Men. 307 

lation used in prose; In the style of simple historic 
prose, this expression never would have been employed 
to designate the sons of Sheth, the righteous men, 
or even Yisrael. If the sacred writer had desired 
to refer in this instance to the ShSthites or the 
Qainites, there were means of indicating them more 
clearly and with a certainty which would have left 
no room for doubt, and would have been strenu- 
ous in condemnation of mixed marriages, taking 
the simplest and clearest of all methods, that of 
naming them directly. It will become manifest to 
whomsoever reads this text attentively and apart 
from all prejudice, that in the words bene hdelohim 
reference is had to strange beings, superior to the 
race of man. In truth, it is impossible to separate 
the expression benoth hddddm in verses 2 and 4 from 
the use of hddddm in verse 1, and dddm in verse 3, 
where this word incontestably refers to mankind in 
its broadest acceptation. The benoth hddddm are the 
daughters of the men, hddddm, " who had begun to 
multiply upon the earth." And with this dddm, as 
it goes on to state, the Spirit of God ceased to 
prevail, "because he is flesh." The man, dddm, 
thus does not here represent a previously corrupted 
race, as that of the Qainites would have been, but a 
race which so far had been rather pure than other- 
wise, in which the Spirit of God prevailed before 
the element of corruption was brought into it by 
the illicit unions with the bene* hdelohim, fallen by 
reason of the carnal desire engendered in them by 
the beauty of the daughters of men, and by these 
very unions. 



VJ 



308 .The Beginnings of History. 

All this has been perfectly apprehended by the 
learned and ingenious author of the little book 
entitled The Genesis of the Earth and Man,^) who 
herein throws out an argument in favor of the Pre- 
adamite theory, started by him afresh, and with a 
good deal of ability, but which, for all his efforts, 
remains in absolute contradiction to the spirit as well 
as the letter of the Bible. To his thinking, the 
benoth hddddm are the daughters of Adamite human- 
ity, and this humanity becomes corrupted by the 
union with the bene 4 hdelohim, whom he regards as 
representatives of Preadamite human ity. ( 2 ) And in 
order that this view of the unhallowed union of two 
races of men may fit in with the expressions of verse 
3, more exactly than is permitted by that interpreta- 
tion which regards the Shethites as the bene 1 hdelohim, 
he is led to the conclusion that these last constitute 
the wicked and impious race. Recurring to an 
interpretation which had already been adopted in 
Aquila's Greek version, ( 3 ) he translates these words, 
not " the sons of God," but " the sons of the gods ;" 
that is, the servants, the worshippers of false gods.( 4 ) 



(*) The authorship of this book may, I think, be ascribed to R. 
Stuart Poole, who appears merely as its editor upon the title-page. 
(?) 2d Ed. (London, 1860), pp. 75-84. 

( 3 ) Aquila translated bene hdelohim by ol iralSeg rav dscbv. 

( 4 ) On the use of ben, " son," in the sense of " servant," see 2 
Kings xvi. 7. Hence such metaphoric expressions as ben mdveth, 
" devoted to death," already under its dominion (1 Sam. xx. 31 ; 
2 Sam. xii. 5 ; Psalm lxxix. 11 ; cii. 21), ben hakkoth, " con- 
demned to flagellation" (Deuteron. xxv. 2). This style of ex- 
pression has passed into the Greek of the New Testament: vlbg 
yzkvvrjq (3fatth. xxiii. 15), vlbg rfjg aKolelag (John xvii. 12). 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 309 

I doubt if any other philologist would consent to 
follow him on this ground^ 1 ) and it should be 
remembered that if elohim be here understood as a 
noun of multitude, instead of being recognized as the 
name of God in the plural of excellence and majesty, 
the only acceptable translation of bend hdelohim would 
be that of the Targumini, " the sons of the mighty 
ones/' for the expression in the plural, elohim, is 
sometimes made use of in the Bible in speaking of 
kings ( 2 ) or of judges/ 3 ) not, as has often been said, 
because of any supposed divine attributes in them, 
but owing to the etymological and primitive sense 
of the word eloah, which means a great, powerful, 
redoubtable being.( 4 ) This brings us back to what 
might be called the current interpretation among the 
Jews, which was refuted above. I have not referred 
to what the anonymous English scholar has written 
on the subject which we are now studying in order to 
commend his personal system, which is less tenable 
than any other, to my thinking ; but simply because 
he has, perhaps more effectually than any one else, 
made clear the impossibility of reconciling the ex- 
pressions of verse 3 with the explanation which has 
been most prevalent in the Christian world since the 
fourth century. 

The opinions of those who see in the narrative 

( 1 ) Still less could we follow Paulus and Ilgen in their suppo- 
sition that bene hdelohim referred to the Qainites falsely boasting 
of a divine origin. 

( 2 ) Psalm lxxxii. 1 and 6. ( 3 ) Exod. xxi. 6 ; xxii. 7 and 8. 
( 4 ) This has been well demonstrated by Michel Nicolas, Etudes 

critiques sur la Bible, p. 115. 



310 The Beginnings of History. 

of Genesis vi. 1-4 the union of two human races, 
whether Shethites and Qalnites, or Preadamites and 
Adamites, seemed lately to have been unexpectedly 
reinforced by the study of the cuneiform documents. 
At least they have undertaken to point out something 
analogous in them. " Sir Henry Rawlinson has 
already proved/^ 1 ) writes George Smith,( 2 ) " that the 
Babylonians recognized two principal races of men : 
the adamu or black race, the sarku or white race, 
corresponding probably with the two races mentioned 
in Genesis under the names of sons of Adam and 
sons of God. It appears incidentally, in our frag- 
ments of inscriptions, that it was the race of Adam, 
or black race, which was believed to have fallen 
through sin ; but we have nothing to indicate to us 
the position of the other race in the Babylonian 
system of the beginning of things. Genesis informs 
us that, when the world became corrupt, the sons 

of God contracted marriages with the daughters of 
A . 

Adam, and that thus the evil which had begun with 

the Adamites, was propagated." If this had been 
quite correct, the hypothesis of the Preadamites 
Avould have found a singularly powerful support. 
But it is nothing more than a phantasmagoria, an 
illusion, the emptiness of which has been already ex- 
posed by Friedrich Delitzsch.( 3 ) It will be necessary 

( T ) Report of the Fortieth Meeting of the British Association for 
the Advancement of Science, at Liverpool, p. 174 [?] ; Journal of 
the Royal Asiatic Society, Annual Report, 1869, pp. xxiii.— xxiv. 

( 2 ) Chaldean Account of Genesis, p. 86. [See Rev. Ed., by 
Sayce, p. 83. Tb.] 

( 3 ) Smith's Chaldseische Genesis, pp. 301-304. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 311 

to linger over its demonstration, even to the extent 
of imposing the fatigue of a little Assyrian and Ac- 
cadian philology upon the patience of the reader, in 
order to dissipate an error which might be seriously 
prejudicial, and to prevent it from taking root. For if 
once a scientific idea which is inexact is spread abroad 
in the name of accepted authorities, nothing is more 
difficult than to stamp it out, and it is likely to 
reappear from time to time long after it has been 
refuted. 

The fancied distinction of two human races, 
Adamite and non- Adamite, black and white, sup- 
posed to have been held by the Babylonians, is a 
view which rests solely upon one passage of the 
cuneiform Syllabaries of the Palace Library of 
Nineveh, as follows : 

us k — 4 ddmu. 

lugud ► < j^T SarJcu. 

adama ► "A %£ £ adamatu.Q-) 

Conformably to the invariable principle of con- 
struction of the three-column Syllabaries of the first 
class, ( 2 ) we have the ideograms to be explained in 
the central column; in the preceding column their 
reading in the Accadian or Sumerian, and in the fol- 
lowing column their reading in Semitic- Assyrian, 
which for us, as for the Assyrians of the time of 
Asshur-bani-abal, explains the writing of the other 
two columns. The passage which we have just cited 

(*) Syllab. A, Ncs. 223-225. 

( 2 ) See Fr. Lenormant, Les Syllabaires cuneiformes, edition 
critique, p. 8 et seq. 



\J 



312 The Beginnings of History. 

contains, to begin with, a first sign, the ideographic 
value of which was expressed in Accadian by the word 
us, in • Assyrian by ddmu, " blood," the Hebrew 
dam. This signification is distinctly corroborated by 
bilingual documents, with the primitive Accadian text 
accompanied by an interlinear Assyrian translation, 
in which the ideogram in question, representing the 
word us, is employed in Accadian to express " the 
blood," and translated by the Semitic ddmu.( l ) This 
is followed by two ideographic compounds, wherein 
the same sign is successively combined with the two 
characters which express the idea of " white" and of 
" black." In the first case, the words corresponding 
with the signification of the compound, are in Ac- 
cadian lugud and in Assyrian sarku; in the second, 
adania in Accadian, and adamatu in Assyrian. But 
the ideographic compounds and words used to read 
them by, do not in any wise designate " a race of 
white men" and " a race of black men;" they are ex- 
pressions for " white blood" and " black blood," or, in 
other words, " pus" and '" blood."( 2 ) Adamatu is an 
Assyrian synonym for ddmu, parallel to the Phoenician 
edom, as ddmu is to the Hebrew dam, and the Accadian 
adania is nothing more than this word, borrowed by 
the non-Semitic idiom of Chaldsea. The expression 
ddmu u sarku is common in Assyrian texts, and that, 

(!) See, for instance, Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 
2, col. 4, 1. 31-32 : lis kuku' mes=akil dami, "eaters of blood." 
And in the 1. 23 of the same document, without the Assyrian 
version, subi inkuku' mes .... us nagnag' mes, "they 
devouring the body, drinking the blood." Cf. Fr. Lenormant, 
Etudes cunSif., II., p. 23 et seq. 

( 2 ) Fr. Lenormant, .Etudes cuneif or mes, II., p. 24. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 313 

too, iu examples where it is clearly impossible to 
make it mean anything but " blood and pus," " blood 
and sanies/' as, for instance, in that form of maledic- 
tion of which we have three different copies, in compar- 
ing which the exchange of ideographic and phonetic 
orthography may be proved : " That Gula, the great 
mother, the great lady, the spouse of the Sun of the 
South (variant, 'of Adar'), may cause to flow in his 
body an incurable poison, and that he may emit 
blood and pus like water ! "(*) " During seventeen 
days," says the king, Asshur-ah-idin, in a historic 
text, in which he narrates his expedition into Arabia- 
Petrsea ? ( 2 ) "from the frontier of Egypt to Makan, and 
leaving Makan over an extent of 20(?) itinerary( 3 ) 
kasbu, I descended.( 4 ) This land was bristling as it 
were with stones and rocks. I spread ( 5 ) the blood 
and the sanies of the enemy as far as the village of 
Dalat."( 6 ) This is widely removed from the supposed 

( x ) Gula urnmu gallatu beliu rabitu hirat Samsi suti (var. Adari) 
simma la azza ina zumrisu lisabliv va ddma u sarka Id mS lirmug 
(var. lirtammug), Ouneif Tnscrip. of West. Asia, vol. I., pi. 70, col. 
4, 1. 5-8; vol. III., pi. 41, col. 2, 1. 29-31 ; vol. III., pi. 43, col. 
4, 1. 15-18. Cf. Fr. Lenormant, Etudes cuneif., II., p. 50 et seq. 

( 2 ) Transact, of the Soc. of Bibl. Archaeology, vol. IV., p. 95 
et seq. 

( 3 ) The kasbu qaqqar is a measure of 21,600 cubits or of 11 
kilometers, 340 metres, in Oppert's metrologic system, and 22 
kilom. 680 metres in Lepsius'. 

(*) It is a technical expression, meaning: "I marched toward 
the South." 

( 5 ) Literally, " I cut in pieces." 

( 6 ) Ekrd a yume u sibitti istu micir [Mucur adi~\ Makannu ultu 
Makan misihti [eSm'a] kasbu qaqqar ardi. qaqqar u suatu kima abni 
kima cibri izqutta. damn u sarku nakiri aqci ana al Dalta. 



314 The Beginnings of History. 

allusion to the two primordial races corresponding 
to the " sons of God" and " the sons of man." 

It is not less inexact to say that the fragments of 
the cosmogonic tables attribute the first sin, in a spe- 
cial way, to a certain race of men designated as Adamic 
or black. In reality, in a fragment to which we 
have already referred in chapter i.^ 1 ) and which has 
nothing to do with the tradition of the Fall,( 2 ) in the 
remains of an invocation to the god Ea, wherein, 
among other merits, he is celebrated as creator of 
men,( 3 ) the substantive admit, corresponding to the 
Hebrew dddm, is once used to signify "the man" 
(rev., 1. 16), and "men," meaning the race, are once 
designated by the expression amelutu, "humanity" 
(obv., 1. 15), and again by that of galmat qaqqadi 
(obv., 1. 18). This is very evidently the place where 
George Smith imagined that a particular black race 
was spoken of, for the expression signifies literally 
"blackness of heads," or "black heads." But the 
lamented English Assyriologist should not have over- 
looked the fact that this metaphorical expression gal- 
mat qaqqadi, which must originally have been confined 
to poetry, came to be one of those most frequently re- 
produced in Assyrian texts of every description, even 
in historic inscriptions ; that its meaning is perfectly 
plain, and that instead of characterizing a special race, 
it is one of the most common ways of speaking of hu- 

0) P. 56. 

(2) This is the text to which George Smith alludes; he was 
utterly mistaken as to its meaning. 

( 3 ) Trans, of the Soc. of Bibl. Archeology, vol. IV., pi. 3 and 4, 
at page 368 ; Fried. Delitzsch, Assyrische Lesestiicke, 2d Ed., pp. 
80 and 81. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 315 

inanity in general^ 1 ) Friedrich Delitzsch( 2 ) explained 
the origin of it very happily, showing that it had 
nothing whatever to do with the color of the skin, 
but was suggested by the idea, which appears also in 
the Bible, of black hair regarded as a sign of manly 
strength and of youth. ( 3 ) It is true that Smith 
thought he had found an instance in which galmat 
qaqqadi seemed to specialize a single race, as distin- 
guished from sarku, supposed to designate men who 
were white. This was in a hymn to Marduk, which 
really contained nothing of the sort, as may be seen 
in the reading given below :( 4 ) 

u Thine are the heaven and the earth, 

thine are together the heaven and the earth, 

thine is the charm of life, 

thine is the philter of life, 

thine is the brilliant enclosure of the bed of the 
Ocean ! 

The whole multitude of black-headed men, all 
living beings, designated by a name, who exist on 
the face of the earth, 

the four regions in their totality, 

the archangels of the legions of the heaven and of 
the earth, 

(*) See Oppert, Expedition en Mesopotamie, vol. II. , p. 283 ; 
Fried. Delitzsch, G. Smith's Chaldseische Genesis, pp. 301-304; Fr. 
Lenorinant, Etudes cuneiformes, pp. 78-80. 

( 2 ) G. Smiths Chaldseische Genesis, p. 304. 

( 3 ) See Franz Delitzsch' s Commentary on Ecclesiastes, XL, 10 
(p. 387). [Eng. Trans., 1877, p. 401. Tr.] 

( 4 ) Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 29, 1, obv., 1. 25- 
45; Fr. Lenormant, Etudes accadiennes, vol. III., p. 117; cf. 
Friedr. Delitzsch, G. Smiths Chaldseische Genesis, p. 302 et seq. 



o 



16 The Beginnings of History. 



\j 



all as many as they be, 

(glorify) thee ! "Q 

It is the two ideograms which express the idea 
of the " brilliant enclosure," ruhusu ellu (of the bed 
of the Ocean), which Smith looked upon as represent- 
ing phonetically the word sarku, without taking the 
rest of the verse into consideration at all, besides 
attributing a value to the second sign which it never 
possesses as a simple phonetic. Far from signifying 
race in a special sense, galmat qaqqadl in this text 
evidently means " mankind," since " all living 
beings" are subsequently mentioned. 

We shall thus have to abandon the search among 
the Chaldeo-Babylonians, at least so far as their 
traditions are at present known, for an original 
distinction between two races of Adamites and Pre- 
adamites, one dark and one fair, one guilty and one 
holy and blessed, something analogous to the Hindu 
idea in the Astika-parva of the Mahdbhdrata, the 
antagonism of the descendants of the two daughters 
of Brahma, Ivadru and Yinata, an ethnographic 
myth, investigated by Baron Eckstein, with a bold- 
ness of criticism amounting sometimes to temerity, 
though always keen and sometimes singularly per- 
spicacious^ 2 ) I do not mention the opposition of the 

( x ) Same u irgitiv kuvvu — ema hame u irgitiv kuvvu — sipat ba- 
latu kuvvu — imat balatu kuvvu — rukusu ellu gu apsi kuvvu. — 
amelutuv yiisi calmat qaqqadi — hknat napisti mala suma nabd ina 
mciti bam — kiprat irbitti mala basa — Igigi sa kissat same u irgitiv — 
mala ba [su~\ — — kasd. 

( 2 ) De quelques legendes brahmaniques qui se rapportent au bcrceau 
de V espe-ce humaine, in vol. VI. of the 5th series of the Journal 
asiatique (1855). 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 317 

Suras or Devas and of the Asuras, which Nork( x ) 
compares to the "sons of God" and "the sons of 
man" in Genesis, for these are purely mythological 
beings, gods, and not representatives of mortal races. 

It may thus be seen that we find no light thrown 
upon the fundamental problem of Genesis vi. 1-4, 
either from the cuneiform documents or from any 
other external source. Nothing can determine the 
sense but the study of the text itself, and the 
comparison of it with other passages of the Bible, 
where the same expressious may be met with. Now, 
it happens that the very two designations which 
have given rise to so many different theories, are not 
unusual terms in Biblical language. On the con- 
trary, these two expressions are of frequent recur- 
rence in the prose as well as poetry of the Bible, and 
with a perfectly certain and well-defined meaning, 
and a peremptory reason would have to be adduced, 
and it does not happen to exist, in order to fasten 
upon them, as they stand in the sixth chapter of 
Genesis, a different signification from the accustomed 
one. 

In truth, there is not a shadow of doubt on this 
point, accepted in all the versions and by all com- 
mentators, that bend hdelohim in Job i. 6 and ii. 1, 
bend elohim in Job xxxviii. 7, and bend dlim in 
Psalm xxix. 1 and lxxxix. 7, is applied to angels. 
It is the same with bar eldhin in the Aramaic of 
Daniel iii. 25. As to bend hddddm,( 2 ) with the arti- 

(!) Brammanismus und Rabbanismus, p. 204 et seq. 
( 2 ) 1 Sam. xxvi. 19; 1 Kings viii. 39; Psalm cxlv. 12; Eccles. 
i. 13 ; ii. 3 and 8 ; iii. 10 and 18 ; viii. 11. 



VJ 



318 The Beginnings of History. 

cle, or bent dddm( l ) without the article, "the sons of 
man," and not " the sons of Adam,"( 2 ) this is one of 
the. most ordinary phrases of the Bible to express 
" men/' just as " man " in the singular is ben Madam 
or ben dddmj^) and this mode of speech passes from 
the Hebrew into the Greek of the New Testament, ( 4 ) 
where 6 ulbt; too dvOpconoo becomes the term ap- 
propriated to the designation of Christ from the 
standpoint of His human nature.( 5 ) 

To my mind, therefore, the great majority of 
modern exegetes, and specially all those who evince 
the most profound philological knowledge of the 
Hebrew, have been justified in agreeing to recognize 
the fact that, as employed in this language, the terms 
bent hdelohim and benoth hddddm can signify only 

(!) Deuteron. xxxii. 8; Psalms xi. 4; xii. 2 and 9; xiv. 2; 
xxi. 11, and many other places. 

( 2 ) Gesenius, Thesaur., vol. L, p. 25. 

(3) Num. xxiii. 19; Psalm viii. 5; lxxx. 18; cxlvi. 3; Job xvi. 
21; xxv. 6; xxxv. 8; Is. lvi. 2; Jerem. xlix. 18; 11 43; Ezeh. 
ii. 1 and 3; iii. 1, 3, 4 and 10; iv. 16; viii. 5, 6 and 8; xi. 2 ; 
xii. 3; xiii. 17; xxi. 11, 19, 24 and 33. 

(*) Schleusner, Lezic. in Nov. Testament, 4th Ed., vol. II. , p. 
1189. 

(5) Poussines (Possinus), Spicilegium evangelicum, $ 32 ; Grotius 
ad Matth. viii., 20 ; Chr. Cellarius, Be sensu appellationis vlbc rov 
avdpc'mov, Program, xxi., p. 129; J. Guillard, Specimen questi- 
onum in Novum Instrumentum de filio hominis, Leyden, 1684; I. H. 
Messerschmidt, Commentatio philologica de sacra formula et dictione 
6 vlbg tov avdpcjirov, Wittemberg, 1739; G. Less, Programma de 
filio hominis, Gottingen, 1776; G. W. Rullmann, Programm. iiber 
die Benennung Jesu des Menschen Sohn, Rinteln, 1785; Versuch 
iiber die Slellcn im N. T. die vom Sohne Gottes und vom Sohne des 
Menschen Jesus reden, in the Magazin far Religion, Philosophic und 
Exegese (Henke's), vol. I., pp. 129-208. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 319 

angels and daughters of the earth. Schneckenbur- 
ger, de Wette, Arnaud, Stier, Dietlein, and Huther, 
in commenting on Genesis vi. 1-4, have thus under- 
stood it, and this meaning has also been adopted and 
defended with irrefragable arguments by the follow- 
ing named more recent writers, Ewald,^) Hupfeld,( 2 ) 
Tuch,( 8 ) Boehmer,( 4 ) Delitzsch,( 5 ) Kurtz,( 6 ) Drechs- 
ler,( 7 ) Baumgarten,( 8 ) Von Hofmann,( 9 ) Twesten,( 10 ) 
Nitzsch,( n ) and Eberhard Schracler.( 12 ) We have also 
thought best to follow it in our translation. 

The usual, we might even go so far as to say the 
invariable, meaning of the principal expressions of 
the text would thus lead us to that interpretation of 
the narrative accepted by the Seventy, Philo, Jose- 

(!) Jahrb'dcher der biblischen Wissenschaft, vol. VII., p. 20. 

( 2 ) Die Quellen der Genesis und die Art ihrer Zusammensetzung, 
pp. 96, 130, 220- Die heutige theosophische oder mythologische Theo- 
logie und Schrifterklserung, p. 22 et seq. 

( 3 ) Kommentar iiber die Genesis, p. 154 [2d Ed., by Arnold and 
Merx, p. 121. Tr.]. 

( 4 ) Das erste Buck der Thora, p. 142 et seq. 

( 5 ) Commentar iiber die Genesis, 3d Ed., p. 230 et seq. [4th Ed., 
pp. 190-194. Tr.] 

( 6 ) Besides the special dissertations cited above, p. 303, note 10: 
Geschichte des Alien Bundes, vol. I., p. 76. [Eng. Trans., 1859, I., 
p. 96 et seq. Tr.] 

( 7 ) Einheit der Genesis, p. 91 et seq. 

( 8 ) Theologisches Commentar z. Pentateuch, on Genesis vi. 1-4. 

( 9 ) Weissagung und Erfullung, vol. I., p. 85 et seq.; Schrift- 
beweis, 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 424 et seq. 

(i°) Dogmatik, vol. II., 1st Part, p. 332. 

( n ) System der christh Lehre, 5th Ed. (1844), p. 235. [Eng. 
Trans., 1849, p. 233. Tr.] 

( 12 ) Studien zur Kritik und Erklserung der biblischen Urgeschichte, 
p. 69. 



\J 



320 The Beginnings of History. 

phus, and all the Fathers of the Church up to the 
fourth century, the undoubted reference* being to the 
guilty loves of angels with the daughters of men, 
whose beauty beguiled them, and to whom "they 
came in." And of these loves, condemned by God, 
was born a race of heroes, men superior in strength 
to the rest of mankind. 

I will not touch here upon the theological question 
raised by St. Augustine,^) who does not decide upon 
its solution, and debated by St. Thomas Aquinas,( 2 ) 
who takes the affirmative side, as to whether purely 
spiritual beings like angels, or demons, could possibly 
have assumed such a corporeal shape as to have 
entered into carnal and fecund relations with women. 
A problem of this nature does not enter within the 
scope of our investigation, which is solely historical 
and critical, any more than does the reality of the 
existence of the incubi and succubse, in whom St. 
Augustine firmly believes ( 3 ) and mediaeval faith 
never for an instant wavered.( 4 ) The only thing 

(i) De civit. Dei, iii. 5 ; xv. 22 and 23. 

( 2 ) Summa, Part 1, quaest. 51, art. 3. 

( 3 ) De civit. Dei, xv. 23. 

( 4 ) The doctrine of the mediaeval theologians on this point is 
completely expounded in the fifth book of the Formicarium seu 
dialogits ad vitarn christianam exemplo conditionum formicse incitativus 
of the famous Dominican Jean Nyder (Paris, 1519, in 4to; Douai, 
1602, in 8vo), chap. ix. and x. This fifth book is reproduced at 
the end of the first volume of the Mcdleus maleficarum of Jacob 
Sprenger, edition of Lyons, 1620, aud the part relating to the 
incubi and succubaa may be found on pages 517-526. 

Heidegger (Histor. sacr. Patriarch., vol. I., p. 289 [ed. Ultraj, 
1683] ), while admitting that in Genesis vi. 1-4 we have the union of 
the sons of Sheth with the daughters of Qain, believes absolutely 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 321 

which concerns us is the fact that this last doctrine 
existed in that intellectual centre in the bosom of 
which the sacred books were composed, and the Bible 
itself contains more than a suggestion of it. During 
all the first half of this century, it was a regular 
scientific fashion to hold that the doctrine of angels 
and demons among the Hebrews was borrowed from 
Zoroastrianism during the period of the Captivity, 
and to make its development an indication of the late 
date of the books in which it is mentioned. But the 
aspect of the question is now completely changed, 
and this theory can no longer be sustained, since we 
have become familiar with the extent, the richness 
and the importance of the dualistic demonology, 
partly of the favorable and protecting kind, partly 
wicked and inimical, of the Chaldeo-Babylonians. 
It contains a whole hierarchy of angels and demons, 
much more numerous and extensive than that of the 
Zend-Avesta, for it comprises, on the side of light 

in the incubi, and accepts the possibility of a race born of the 
connection between demons and women. As a general thing, 
during mediaeval times and even in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries, the reason of the aversion to the interpretation of the 
bene haelohim as angels, was not the impossibility that spiritual 
beings should make themselves tangible, and in consequence have 
a physical copulation ; but rather the repugnance to admit that 
so gross a pleasure could have induced beings so perfect as the 
angels of God to commit sin (this is St. Augustine's chief line of 
reasoning). Over and above this, the words of Christ are called 
to witness that angels are sexless, even if it be otherwise with 
demons with violent carnal passions. It seems that the theory 
was held at that time, though we find it nowhere distinctly stated, 
that a sexual condition was a result of the primordial fall of the 
rebellious spirits, when they passed from the state of angels to 
that of demons. 

21 



\J 



322 The Beginnings of History. 

and good alone, " three hundred heavenly spirits and 
six hundred earthly spirits^ 1 ) divided into classes, as 
are the evil spirits on their side."( 2 ) And this denion- 
ology is certainly greatly anterior to that of Zoroas- 
trianism, over which it exerted a strong influence; it 
may be traced back to the most ancient epochs of 
Chaldsean civilization, long centuries before that 
migration which led the Terahites forth from this 
country. There are even strong reasons for believing 
this to be the remains of an ancient spiritualistic 
religion, which may have been primitively the reli- 
gion of the non-Semitic nations of Shumer and 
Accad, and perhaps held sway in the Lower Basin 
of the Tigris and Euphrates, prior to the age 
when the Semitic Pantheism of Babylon began to 
predominate. ( 3 ) 

However this may be, the belief in incubi and 
succubae, the male and female demons of nocturnal 
impurity, holds a very important place in the demon- 
ological ideas of the Chaldeo-Babylonians. The 
incubus and succuba are called in Accadian Ullal and 
kiel-lillaly "the one which fetters " and "the concu- 

(i) G. Smith, North British Review, January, 1870, p. 309 [Am. 
Ed., p. 163. Tr.] ; Fr. Lenormant, Die Magie und Wahrsagekunst 
der Chaldseer, p. 131. [Chald. Magic, p. 122. Tr.] 

( 2 ) On this hierarchy of evil demons, see Fr. Lenormant, Magie 
und Wahrsagekunst der Chaldseer, pp. 23-41 [Chald. Magic, pp. 
23-38. Tr.], 

(3) This is what I have tried to prove in the fourth chapter of 
my book on La. magie chez les Chalde'ens (Paris, 1874), revised 
and considerably enlarged in the German translation : Die Magie 
und Wahrsagekunst der Chaldseer, Jena, 1878 [and in Chaldsean 
Magic, London, 1877. Tr.]. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 323 

bineQ which fetters ; " in Assyrian-Semitic, lilu and 
lilituv, the male and the female " nocturnal demon."( 2 ) 
There is still a second variety of female succubus, 
whose Accadian name hiel-udda-harra seems to imply 
that a union with her might prove fertile,( 3 ) called in 
Accadian ardat-lili, " the servant," or rather " the 
concubine of night." In all the enumerations of 
demons which we find in the formula of deprecatory 
conjurations, these three fantastic beings are named 
together ;( 4 ) and one of the tables of prognostics sug- 
gested by monstrous births, says that in a certain 
given case " the Lilit will not make her appearance 
before men."( 5 ) 

Yesha'yahu admits the existence of the Lilith, 
known to the Hebrews as well as the Babylonians, 
and called by the same name. He says in his pro- 
phecy against Edom : ( 6 ) 

( x ) The Accadian term kiel seems to express etymologically the 
idea of puella pathica : Fr. Lenormant, Etudes cuneif ormes, II., 
p. 34. 

( 2 ) Fr. Lenormant, Magie und Wahrsagekunst, p. 40. 

( 3 ) Kiel-udda-karra is a composite expression, giving us, first, 
the word kiel, which was just now referred to ; second, udda, " to 
go forth," and derivatively "to go forth in birth," employed as 
substantive to describe a " child, offspring" (Assyrian-Semitic 
ilidtu), and entering into the formation of the compound verb 
uatudda (uatu-udda) , "to be brought forth, to be born;" third, 
karra, participle of the verb kar, " to arrange, to dispose" (Assy- 
rian, ediru), "to take, to receive" (Assyrian, ekimu). 

( 4 ) See among others Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. II., pi. 
17, 1. 63, c-d; vol. IV., pi. 16, 1, 1. 19-20 ; pi. 29, 1, rev., 1. 29-30. 

(5) Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. III., pi. 65, obv., 1. 23 ; 
lilit panisunu la tabsi. 

( 6 ) Is. xxxiv. 13 and 14. 



\J 



324 The Beginnings of History. 

" The thorns will grow in its palaces, 

brambles and thistles in its fortresses. 

It will be the dwelling of jackals, 

the den of ostriches. 

The cats of the desert will meet the wild dogs 
there, 

and the Se'ir will call thither his companion ; 

there 'Lilith will have her dwelling, 

and will find her place of rest." 

Among the rabbins of the degenerate age of Ju- 
daism, Lilith appears as a vampire, a sort of Lamia 
or unclean thing, carrying off little children in order 
to put them to death ;(*) and is also associated with 
the ghoul of Arab superstition. We do not find her 
retaining her early character of succuba, except in 
those legends in which she is spoken of as united to 
Adam, thus becoming the mother of numerous de- 
mons^ 2 ) in which connection it is said that the man 

(!) Buxtorf, Lezic. rabbin., p. 1140; Eisenmenger, Entdecktes 
Judenthum, vol. II., p. 418 et seq. ; Gesenius, Commentar iiber den 
Jesaia, vol. II., pp. 916-920 ; A. Levy, in Zeitschrift d. deutsch. Mor- 
genl. Gesellschaft, vol. IX., p. 484 et seq. 

It is even made the sovereign of the demons (Zohar, I., fol. 170 
et seq. ; 387), the feminine representative of all evil (Schabbath, 
fol. 151), and finally, by a series of the most bizarre combinations, 
it comes to be identified in certain legends with the Queen of 
Sheba (Bacher, Lilith Konigin von Smargad, in Frankel & Grsetz's 
Zeitschrift, 1870, p. 187 et seq.). 

( 2 ) Eisenmenger, vol. I., pp. 165 and 461 ; vol. II,, p. 413 et 
seq. — Among the sons of Lilith are mentioned Hormiz and Hor- 
min, that is, Ormuzd (Ahuramazda) and Ahriman (Angromainyus) 
of the Parsees: A. Levy, Zeitschrift des deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch., 
vol. IX., p. 485 ; Bapoport, Erech Millin., p. 247; Grunbaum, 
Zeitschr. d. deutch. Morgenl. Gesells., vol. XVI., p. 398. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 325 

who sleeps alone in a house falls into the power of 
the Lilith^ 1 ) or that any man might have the same 
thing happen to him with her that happened to 
Adam.( 2 ) The book of Enoch reckons Lilith among 
the angels, fallen in consequence of their terrestrial 
loves.( 3 ) Among the Sabseans or Mendai'tes, the angel 
Sarniel is said to remove from the couches of women 
in child-bed the Leliotos, who would kill their new- 
born children. ( 4 ) But more frequently these female 
demons are represented as succubse, who form part of 
the cortege of Astro or Namrus, the spirit of impu- 
rity. ( 5 ) The most curious passage in this connection 
is that found in the book of Adam,( 6 ) in a declama- 
tion against the ascetics and the anchorites : " Then 
the female Leliotos approach them and sleep with 
them, that they may receive their seed and become 
pregnant. Hence are born the Shid6 (demons) and 
the Henge, who throw themselves upon the daughters 
of men." 

Thus, from the union of the female succubse with 
men, according to Sabsean belief, are supposed to 
spring the masculine demons of lasciviousness. These 

( J ) Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, vol. II., p. 452. 

(2) Eisenmenger, vol. II., pp. 424 and 426. 

As a match to this idea, the rabbins held that an angel, Laye- 
lah, presided over conception: Buxtorf, Lexic. rabbin., p. 1140. 

(3) IV., 70. [?] 

(*) Fragment of the Sidra Yahia, as given in Stseudlin, Beitrsege 
zur FhilosQphie und Geschichte der Religions-und Sittenlehre, vol. III., 
p. 24 ; cf. Lorsbach, Ifuseumf'dr biblische und orientalische Literatur, 
vol. I., p. 87. 

(5) Norberg, Cod. Nasar., vol II., p. 196; vol. III., p. 158. 

( 6 ) Cod. Nasar., vol. I., p. 106. 



326 The Beginnings of History. 

Henge, whose name signifies "the Jumpers," and 
who are elsewhere mentioned,^) always with the same 
characteristics, are identical with the Se'irlm, who 
are associated with the Lilith by Yesha'yahu, and 
mentioned again by the same prophet in describing 
the desolation presented by the ruins of Babylon 
destroyed : ( 2 ) 

" The wild cats will make their den there, 

the hyenas will fill its houses ; 

the ostriches will make their dwellings there, 

and the Se'irim will jump there." 

The Se'irim, whose name signifies " the hairy 
ones,"( 3 ) and is likewise applied to he-goats, are crea- 
tures whom the orthodox Hebrews regarded as de- 
mons, and the Thorah rebukes the Israelites for hav- 
ing sometimes sacrificed to them.( 4 ) They are the 
Satyrs of Phoenician mythology, and certain scarabsei 
of Phoenician workmanship represent them under 
the form given by the Greeks to the half-animal 
demons among the followers of Dionysos.( 5 ) St. 

(!) God. Nasar., vol. II., p. 86. ( 2 ) Is. xiii. 21. 

( 3 ) In regard to these fantastic beings, see Bochart, Hierozo'icon, 
1. vi., c. 7; vol. II., p. 828 et seq., London edition, 1663; Gese- 
'nius, Commentar iiber den Jesaia, vol. II., p. 465 et seq.; 915; W. 
Baudissin, Studien zur semitischen Religionsgesckichte, vol. I., pp. 
136-139. 

( 4 ) Levit. xvii. 7; cf. 2 Chron. xi. 15. 

(s) C. W. Mansell, Gazette archeologique, 1877, p. 74. 

Berossus describes, among the monstrous beings who were 
found in the neighborhood of Omoroca (Tiamat Um-Uruk), as 
represented in the paintings of the temple of Bel Marduk at 
Babylon, "men with the legs and horns of a goat" (fragm. 1 of 
my edition). On a Babylonian cylinder (Lajai'd, Quite de Mithra, 
pi. li., No. 3), a winged goat with a human face is the animal 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 327 

Jerome^ 1 ) therefore, describes them most exactly 
in calling them vel incubones vel Satyros vel 
sylvestres quosdam homines quos nonnulli Fatuos 
ficarios vocant. He ascribes to them the essential 
character of incubi, as does Moses Maimonides also( 2 ) 
among the Jews, for according to the belief of ancient 
superstition the Satyrs actually attacked wonien,( 3 ) a 
belief accepted by St. Augustine.( 4 ) Perhaps it is 
not unworthy of remark that Jamblicus may have 
located the scene of his romance in Babylonia, since 
it is permeated with the manners and customs of the 
country, and in it the young Sinonis is tortured by 
the libertine persecutions of a phantom under the 
form of a he-goat.( 5 ) To this day even the people of 
Hillah imagine that the ruins in their neighborhood 
are haunted by demons of this description. ( 6 ) 

In the Greek text of the Book of Tobit7one of the 
latest, as to date of composition, among the deutero- 

which fights with a luminous and celestial deity; on another 
(Lajard, pi. lvii., No. 1), the same monster is placed opposite a 
winged sphinx. 

(!) Comment, in Is. [xiii. 20-22] v., vol. III., p. Ill, Martianai's 
edition. 

( 2 ) More nebouckim, iii. 46. 

( 3 ) See the history related by Philostratus, Vit. Apollon., vi. 13. 

( 4 ) De civit. Dei, xv. 23 : Quoniam creberrima fama est, multique, 
se expertos, vel ab eis, qui ezperti essent, de quorum fide dubitandum 
non est, audisse confirmant, Sylvanos et Faunos, quos vulgo Incubos 
vocant, improbos saepe exstitisse mulieribus, et earum appetiisse et pere- 
gisse concubitum et quosdam daemones quos Dusios Galli nuncupant, 
hanc assidue immunditiam et tentare et ejficere, plures talesque asseverant, 
ut hoc negare impudentiae videatur. 

( 5 ) Ap. Phot. Biblioth., cod. 94, p. 74, ed. Bekker. 

( 6 ) Rich, in Fundgruben des Orients, vol. III., pp. 143, 144. 



VJ 



328 The Beginnings of History. 

canonical writings of the Bible, Sarra, daughter of 
Raguel, " has already been given to seven husbands, 
who were all found dead in the nuptial chamber, . . 
. . for a demon loves this maid, and he injures 
whomsoever seeks to approach her." (*) We must 
accept this as the first version of the book, and not 
that beautiful lesson of conjugal chastity substituted, 
in the Latin of St. Jerome,( 2 ) for this conception of 
a genuine incubus, whether he found this expurga- 
tion in the Aramaic text, posterior to the Greek, from 
which he is said to have translated, or whether he 
made it on his own authority ; for he took great lib- 
erties with the letter of this book, which indeed came 
down to him in a greatly altered condition. The 
demon lover of the daughter of Raguel is called As- 
mocleus,( 3 ) and is apparently Ashmedai or Ashmodai, 
the demon of voluptuousness, the prince of the infer- 
nal spirits, who plays so conspicuous a part in the 
conceptions of rabbinical demonology, where he is 
spoken of as the cause of the fall of King Shelo- 
moh.( 4 ) The treatise Gittln( 5 ) even tells how, when 
he had persuaded the king to leave his palace, Ash- 
medai! hastened to take possession of the royal harem, 
this being a new characteristic, which represents him 

(i) vi., 13 and 14. 

( 2 ) In his 17th verse, chapter vi. ; previously, in the 15th verse, 
corresponding to the loth of the Greek, he suppresses all the latter 
part, which describes the love of the demon for Sarra. 

( 3 ) iii. 8, in the Greek and the Latin ; 17 in the Greek only. 

( 4 ) Buxtorf, Lexic. rabbin., p. 237; Eisenmenger, Entdecktes 
Judenthum, vol. I., pp. 351-361. 

(5) Fol. 68, col. 2. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 329 

animated with erotic passion. His name constitutes 
the only instance in which we know certainly that 
the Jewish demonology borrowed from that of 
Zoroastrian Iran; for Ashmodai is undoubtedly a 
contraction of Aeshmo Daev6.( x ) He is the demon 
Aeshma of the Zend-Avesta,( 2 ) the special adver- 
sary of Qraosha,( 3 ) the pre-eminently "wicked,"( 4 ) 
wicked in soul and wicked in body,( 5 ) with a sinister 
brilliancy,( 6 ) possessing all knowledge except the art 
of healing. ( 7 ) We should also note the double fact 
that the oldest mention of Ashmedai among the Jews, 
in the Book of Tobit, makes him appear in Media at 
Rhagse, and that his name (connected later artificially 
with the root shdmad, "to lose, to devastate") was 
spelled, as Maury has discriminatingly remarked,( 8 ) 
so as to suggest the signification of $sh-Mddai } "the 
fire of Media." 

All the beliefs which we have passed rapidly in 
review belong to popular superstition. There was 
nothing of this sort in the Mosaic teaching, as there 

( 1 ) Windischmann, Zoroastrische Studien, p. 138 et seq. ; Kohut, 
Judische Angelologie, p. 75 et seq. ; Spiegel, Eranlsche Alterthums- 
kunde, vol. II., p. 132. 

( 2 ) Yagna, lvi. 12 ; Vendiddd, ix. 37 ; x. 23 ; xi. 26 ; see Spie- 
gel, Eranische Alter thumskunde, vol. II., p. 131. 

( 3 ) Yesht, xi. 15. ( 4 ) Yesht, x. 93. 
(5) Yesht, x. 97 and 134. («) Yesht, xix. 95. 

C) Yagna, x. 18. — This is the reason that the angel Raphael 
(medicine of God) is sent "to heal" the evil done by Ashmodai 
(Tob., iii. 17 in the Greek ; iii. 25 in the Latin). Just as in the 
passage of the Yagna, to which we shall recur, Haoma is con- 
trasted as healer with Aeshma. 

( 8 ) La magie et V astrologie dans Vantiquite et au moyen &ge, 3d 
Ed., p. 290. 



VJ 



330 The Beginnings of History. 

was among the Chaldseans ; religion found no place 
for them. Therefore they could not be indicated 
in the Bible except by fugitive allusions, which, 
nevertheless, suffice to show that these superstitious 
beliefs existed in the popular conception, and swayed 
the minds of the nation. In order to understand 
the allusions of the prophets, it is necessary for us 
to turn to certain sources, of which some belong to 
very late epochs. It would be an error of method, 
did not the comparison with the remains that have 
come down to us of the original magical books of 
the Chaldseans justify us in so doing, by demon- 
strating that the ideas, the exposition of which we 
have drawn from these recent records, should actu- 
ally be traced back to a very remote antiquity, 
having been formulated and widely spread long 
before the redaction of the Jehovist document incor- 
porated in Genesis, indeed, that probably a great 
number of these conceptions were carried with them 
by the Terahites when they quitted Ur of the Kas- 
dim. 

We read in the Pehlevi Bundehesh( l ) that Djem 
(Yima) had a sister, named Djemak, who was at the 
same time his wife ; this is the primordial pair of 
Yama and Yami in the Aryo-Indian tradition. In 
another part of the same book,( 2 ) we are told that 
Djem, after his sin, took for wife the sister of a 
Daeva, or demon, and gave, at the same time, his 
sister Djemak in marriage to this Daeva, monstrous 
and accursed unions, from which sprung " the men 

(i) Chap, xxxii. [xxxi.] ( 2 ) Chap, xxiii. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 331 

of the mountains who have tails. "(*) Likewise, it is 
stated, farther on, during the reign of the infernal 
Dahak, that from a union of the same kind between 
a young man and a Pairika (another class of evil 
spirits), were born the Ethiopians and all men with 
black skin. Kalisch( 2 ) has compared this with Genes. 
vi. 1-4, and really there is an incontestable analogy 
between the two narratives. But the absolute isola- 
tion which marks the narrative of the Bwndehesh, 
not a trace of any analogous record being found 
either in the Zend-Avesta or in the Epic tradition, as 
collected by Firdouzi, Hamza, and the other writers 
of the Musselman epoch, is of a nature to inspire 
great doubts in regard to its character as a genuine 
Iranian legend. It savors strongly of having been 
borrowed, if not directly from Genesis, at least from 
the cycle of apocryphal traditions which had enlarged 
upon its narrative, the most complete exemplification 
of which we find in the Book of Henoch, so popular 
for a time throughout the East. 

It is worthy of note, too, that the narrative in 
Genesis touching the loves of the " sons of God " and 
the "daughters of man," bears a totally different 
character from the repulsive stories of the incubi and 
succubse, which we have been compelled to investi- 
gate in the foregoing pages. Here are no impure 
demons, who wantonly attack women, but spirits of 
light, angels from heaven, who fall a prey to the 

( 1 ) In chap. xv. there is another reference to the "man with 
a tail, and with hair on his body," who inhabits the desert. 
Doubtless this fable was suggested by monkeys. 

( 2 ) Genesis, p. 175. 



\J 



332 The Beginnings of History. 

beauty of earthly maidens, and for the sake of that 
beauty forget their purity, and forsake their celestial 
abodes, that they may unite with them ; and though 
this be a guilty union, displeasing to God, the supe- 
riority of these sons of God to the race of men pro- 
duces a race of heroes as the fruit of their loves. If 
this record has its counterpart in the traditions of 
pagan nations, the legend which comes nearest to it 
is that complete cycle of myths founded upon the 
idea that the heroes participating in the divine nature 
and superior to other men, are sons of the gods, issues 
of amorous unions between the race of the immortals 
and that of men.f 1 ) The heroes (^G>a>sc), says Plato,( 2 ) 
are demigods, for they are all born of the love of a 
god for a mortal woman, or of a goddess for a mortal 
man (if>o.(jd£VTzc; y dsbz dvqzr^ 7] dvqrol dsd^); and 
Herodotus ( 3 ) remarks that the Egyptians were the 
only people among whom this belief did not exist. 

At this point we should attach a capital importance 
to the expressions which, in our passage of Genesis, 
terminate verse 4. There it is said of the children 
born of the loves of the "sons of God" with the 
" daughters of man : " hemmdh haggibborim asher 
me' 61dm anshe hasshem, " these are the heroes (be- 
longing) to antiquity, men of renown." Josephus( 4 ) 
and Philo( 5 ) are incorrect in making the expression 
gibborim stand for an idea of violence, the abuse of 

(i) Welcker, Griechische Gcetterlehre, vol. III., pp. 240-247. 
(2) CratyL, 33. [xvi.. p. 398. Tr.] ( 3 ) II., 50. 

( 4 ) Antiq. Jud., i. 3, 1 ; he translates gibborim, vfipccral nal 
7ravTOQ vrrepoTrrcu Kalov. 

( 5 ) De gigant, [xiii.] p. 270. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 333 

force, and revolt against heaven ; in fine, an evil con- 
ception. The impious character attributed to the race 
born of the forbidden unions results from the context 
taken as a whole, and the way in which the Deluge is 
there represented as a consequence of these acts, not 
from the appellation which designates them. The 
sole instance of an unfavorable meaning attributed to 
the word gibbor in the Bible, conveying the idea of a 
man abusing his strength, a tyrant, may be found in 
Psalm, lii. 3 ; and even this signification is not neces- 
sarily implied by the word, which might perfectly 
well be translated : " Why dost thou boast thyself of 
thy wickedness, powerful man?" 

Everywhere else, gibbor is used in a good sense. 
Its primary meaning is "powerful, strong." Gib- 
bor hail signifies an active man, vigorous in his 
actions,^) or powerful by reason of his riches. ( 2 ) 
Oftener still, this expression implies an active, vigor- 
ous, indefatigable warrior ;( 3 ) for "hero" is the most 
generally correct translation of the word gibbor. 
"All Yisrael knoweth that thy father is a hero (Id 
gibbdr)" says Hushai to Abshalom.( 4 ) Alexander 
the Great is peculiarly the meleh gibbor, the " hero- 
king,"^) and the lion, the gibbor babbehdmdh, "hero 
among the animals." ( 6 ) Psalm xix. 6 says, speaking 
of the sun : 

(!) 1 Kings xi. 28 ; Nehcm xi. 14. 

( 2 ) Ruth ii. 1 ; 1 Sam. ix. 1 ; 2 Kings xv. 20. 

( 3 ) Judges vi. 12 ; xi. 1 ; 1 Sam. ix. 1 ; 2 Kings v. 1 ; 1 Chron. 
xii. 28; 2 Chron. xiii. 3; xvii. 16; — in the plural: 2 Kings xv. 
20 ; xxiv. 14 ; 1 Chron. vii. 5, 11 and 40. 

(*) 2 Sam. xvii. 10. ( 5 ) Dan. xi. 3. ( 6 ) Prov. xxx. 30. 



334 The Beginnings of History. 

"Like a bridegroom who goeth forth from the 
nuptial chamber, 

he rejoices as a hero to run his course ;" 
which might be compared, in the first place, to such 
epithets as " valiant," -idlu,Q) " valiant hero/' qarradu 
idluv,( 2 ) " hero " or " warrior of the universe," quradu 
kalama,( 3 ) which are among the sacred qualifications 
of Shamash, the Sun-god, in the Assyro-Babylonian 
documents ; secondly, the first part of the verse re- 
sembles a bilingual Accadic- Assyrian hymn, addressed 
to this same god : 

" Like to a bridegroom, thou startest forth joyous 
and triumphant."( 4 ) 

"Yahveh is a strong one and a hero (gibbor), 
Yahveh is a hero in battles."( 5 ) He is " the great 
God, the hero and the terrible one."( 6 ) He is also 
sometimes called M gibbor, literally "the god-hero."( 7 ) 
The men of David's body-guard, chosen with special 
care from among the most valiant and faithful of his 
soldiers, particularly from among those who had fol- 

( x ) Cuneif. Inscr. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 6, col. 1, 1. 74-75 ; 
col. 2, 1. 71 ; cf. Fr. Lenormant, Etudes Cuneif ormes, IV., p. 13. 
( 2 ) Cuneif. Inscr. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 17, obv., 1. 3-4. 
^j (3) Cuneif. Inscr. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 33, 1. 42, a. 

( 4 ) Cuneif. Inscr. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 19, 2, 1. 50-51 : 
kima muta tazzizzu Jiadu u rlsu. 

( 5 ) Psalm xxiv. 8. ( 6 ) Deuteron. x. 17. 

( 7 ) Is. x. 21. I do not quote ix. 5 because the meaning of that 
expression takes its coloring from the belief of the translator ; 
for the Christian who attributes a Messianic significance to pro- 
phecy, el gibbor means here "strong, mighty God;" for the 
rationalist, it represents a "strong, vigorous, active hero," and 
the two interpretations are equally justifiable from a philological 
standpoint. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 335 

lowed his fortunes from the beginning, are known in 
the history of Israel under the name of gibborS 
David, "the heroes of David," ( x ) and it would 
appear that the title of gibborim was their official ap- 
pellation^ 2 ) more particularly applied to their three 
commandants.( 3 ) It is thus that in poetic language 
this term of gibbdr, " hero," became descriptive of 
warriors in general,( 4 ) and officers in particular, as 
distinguished from simple soldiers. ( 5 ) Yesha'yahu 
says ironically in this connection : 

"Woe to those who are heroes in drinking wine, 
strong men to mix the intoxicating drink ! " ( 6 ) 

Lastly, the word which we are considering posi- 
tively designates a legendary hero in Genesis, when 
Nimrod is called gibbdr bddreg, "a hero on the 
earth,"( 7 ) gibbdr-gaid Upline* Yahveh, "a hero-hunter 
before Yahveh."( 8 ) 

Moreover, there is a close relationship between the 
passage on the "sons of God" and "the daughters 
of men," and the passage relating to Nimrod, both 

(!) 1 Kings i. 8 ; 1 Chron. xi. 26 ; xxix. 24. 

( 2 ) On this body of gibborim, see Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes 
Israel, 2d Ed., vol. IV., p. 177 et seq. [3d Ed., IV., p. 202 et seq. ; 
Eng. Trans., IV., p. 135. Tr.] 

( 3 ) 2 Sam. xxiii. 8. 

( 4 ) Psalm lxxviii. 65 ; Is. xiii. 3 ; Jerem. li. 30. — h'cge* gibbor, 
"the arrows of the warrior:" Psalm cxx. 4; cxxvii 4; hereb 
gibbdr, "the sword of the warrior:" Zach. ix. 13. 

( 5 ) The distinction in Is. iii. 2, and in Ezek. xxxix. 20, should 
be thus understood. By an abuse of this meaning in 1 Chron. ix. 
26, the gibbore hassha'arim are the "chiefs of the porters" of the 
Temple. In Ezr. vii. 28 we have kal-sare hammelek hag gibborim, 
"all the princes who surround the king, the mighty chiefs " 

(6) Is. v. 22. C) Gen. x. 8. ^) Gen. x. 9. 



\J 



336 The Beginnings of History. 

of them taken from the Jehovist version. These 
are the only two places in the first eleven chapters of 
Genesis, where the writer, instead of presenting his 
statement with no other guarantee save that of his 
personal authority, alludes distinctly to a popular 
story. The whole method, in both instances, is so 
peculiar, breaking in so evidently upon the thread of 
the narration, that it is impossible to doubt that it 
was intentional. It seems to imply a sort of oratori- 
cal precaution, or reserve. The narrator no longer 
speaks directly in the name of the inspiration which 
guides him, but simply appears as the recorder of a 
current tradition. For instance, when, in the sixth 
chapter, fourth verse, he says, "these are the heroes 
of old, men of renown/' it is clear that he credits 
the popular legend with the appellation gibborim, 
"heroes," and that his expressions might be thus 
paraphrased : "These are the men who are known as 
the heroes of old, about whom so many tales are 
told." 

This view has elsewhere ( l ) led me to regard the 
introduction of this story in Genesis from a very dif- 
ferent standpoint from that of most orthodox com- 
mentators; the thought of the writer, as I think, 
seeming to be not so much to set forth a history of a 
positive character as to make use of a widely-spread 
legend, in order to give it a meaning conformed to 
his doctrine, making a symbolical and figurative nar- 
ration of it, depicting therein, under striking forms, 
the violence and iniquity of men before the Deluge, 

( J ) Essai de commentaire des fragments cosmogo?iigues de Berose, 
p. 342. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 337 

and the state of revolt against the divine laws which 
drew this terrible punishment down upon them. The 
first chapters of Genesis, and it is the object of our 
book to demonstrate this, are nothing more than a 
collection of the ancient Hebrew traditions of the 
beginning of things, traditions which they held in 
common with the nations by whom they were sur- 
rounded, and in a very special way with the Chaldseo- 
Babylonians. This compilation was made by inspired 
writers, who found means, while collating the old 
narratives, to make them the figurative garb of 
eternal truths, such as the creation of the world by a 
personal God ; the descent of mankind from a single 
pair, their fall in consequence of the guilt of the first 
parents, which put them under the dominion of sin ; 
the free-will character of the first sin, and of those 
which followed in its train. But while drawing a 
sublime dogmatic teaching from the sequence of this 
traditional history, the value and authority of which 
are not in the least impaired or lessened by this way 
of understanding the sacred book, and while impress- 
ing upon the story the stamp of the most rigorous 
monotheism, which it could not possibly have always 
preserved in the popular narratives, the legendary 
and allegorical tone have been retained. The form, 
made venerable in their eyes by its antiquity, has 
been respected, and into the body of the recital has 
been grafted the whole story of generation after gen- 
eration up to the days of the Patriarchs, who left 
Chaldsea to enter the land of Kena'an. 

It is evident, from the very words of Genesis vi. 
4 and x. 9, that the Hebrews possessed a whole cycle 
22 



338 The Beginnings of History. 

of heroic legends, which passed from mouth to 
mouth, legends analogous to those of the neighbor- 
ing peoples. We are now enabled to form some idea 
of what these legends, in large part brought by the 
Terahites from their Chaklsean cradle, may have 
been, by means of the fragment relating to Mmrod, 
inserted in chapter x., as well as the numerous 
remains of heroic myths which constitute the cycle 
of the Chaldsso-Babylonian epopee, lately come into 
our possession, and which we are learning to decipher. 
Divided into two parts by the Deluge, for they are 
continued for several generations after the cataclysm, 
this cycle of heroes does not vary essentially from the 
analogous cycles found in the traditions of the Greeks 
and Indians, nor that which has but barely been 
brought to light in Chaklaea. The narratives com- 
posing it were, of all those treating of the origin of 
things, evidently the very ones which bore the most 
decided mythological impress, and would be most 
likely to suggest polytheistic ideas by the worship of 
its heroes. They were also the very ones systemati- 
cally made least use of by the inspired writers. They 
steadily offered, as the only heroes whose memory 
Yisrael should hold in honor, the patriarchs, with 
whom began the separate history of the people of 
God, they whose lives were characterised as human 
and natural, and who were associated with the tradi- 
tion of monotheism, which held Yisrael apart from 
all other nations. Thus, after the account of the 
Creation, the Fall, and the First Murder, or, in other 
words, the Origin of Sin in the world, the detailed 
and consecutive narrative only begins with Abraham. 



Children of God and daughters of Men. 339 

Only one complete story is recorded in the vast 
interval of time which separates the fratricide of 
Qain from the calling of Abraham, and that is the 
story of the Deluge, which is owing to its moral and 
religious import. The preceding and subsequent 
periods are taken up solely with bare Tholedoth, con- 
structed so as to cut short all mythical outgrowth. As 
to the legends which referred to the gibborim asher 
m&dldm, "the heroes of great antiquity," the sacred 
writers refuse them the right of being named in their 
books. Nevertheless, they do not pass over them in 
absolute silence, for they are confronted with the fact 
of their existence, of which they must take some 
account, if only to warn Yisrael against the abuses 
which may result from it. But they refer to them 
only by way of allusion, and in Genesis vi. 1-4 the 
author of the Jehovist document, whose text and 
pervading idea has been adopted by the final redactor, 
stigmatizes with reprobation those very personages 
on whom the legend admiringly bestowed the name 
of gibborim, or "heroes," and made of them anshe* 
hasshem, thus boasting of their glory, their greatness 
and their exploits. 

We saw just now that one of the essential traits of 
the nature of heroes among the Gentile peoples was 
the fact of their springing from the loves of the gods 
and mortal women But with the monolatric and mo- 
notheistic conception which dominated the Hebrew 
mind, even over and above the faithful observance of 
the precepts of the Thorah, and which assured to 
Yahveh an incontestable predominance over the 
strange gods which were associated with Him, while 



\J 



340 The Beginnings of History. 

yet subordinated to Him, when the people of Yisrael 
fell into polytheism; with the manner in which 
Yahveh, even when the idea of His purely spiritual 
essence was overshadowed by the obtrusion of impure 
and gross elements, stood distinct from all the elohim 
of the nations in His character of a god without 
a spouse, who was never said to have entered upon 
the conjugal state ; with this special characteristic of 
the religious spirit of Israel, the divine loves, whence 
issued the heroes of the pagan peoples, necessarily 
had to be transferred into the world of beings inter- 
mediate between God and mankind, the heavenly 
angels, subject to Yahveh Elohtm, created by Him, 
ministers of His will, but of a much purer and 
higher nature than men. Thus it was not the clo- 
himi^) who were regarded as fathers of the gibborim, 
as among the Gentile nations, but only the bend ha- 

( ] ) The word elohtm is often applied in the Bible to the gods 
of the Gentiles; but the signification "angels," sometimes at- 
tributed to it in the ancient versions, does not seem philologically 
justifiable (see Gesenius, Thesaur., vol. I., p. 95 et seq. ) The 
substitution of "angels" for "God" in the majority of the pas- 
sages where this translation occurs is only the result of a later 
scruple, which desired to avoid too strong a flavor of anthro- 
pomorphism. In the 82d Psalm, 1st verse, the elohim are un- 
doubtedly the kings of the earth. In the 97th Psalm, 7th verse, 
the gods of the nations are spoken of in the following words : 

"They are confounded, all those who serve images, 
who glory in vain idols. 
All the gods fall down before him." 

On the other hand, in the mythological narratives of the Phoe- 
nicians in Sanchoniathon (p. 28, ed Orelli), the elohim are sub- 
ordinate gods, genuine 6ai.fj.oveg, the companions and servants of 
El-Cronos. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 341 

elohim, or spirits of an inferior order, attracted by 
the beauty of the benoth hddddm. 

The sacred writers have accepted this rendering, 
which did not detract from their doctrine of the 
nature of God, and entailed no danger of dogmatic 
error, even agreeing to a remarkable extent with the 
idea that angelic purity itself is imperfect in the 
sight of God, and that the ministers of the will of 
the Eternal are themselves capable of sin^ 1 ) for per- 
fection is an attribute of Yahveh only. Doubtless 
there is an idea implied contrary to the absolute 
spirituality of angels. But this absolute spirituality 
is nowhere distinctly stated in the books of the Old 
Testament ; some of the Fathers of the Church even, 
as Bergier has observed, have only an imperfect con- 
ception of it ; Tertullian, Origen, Clement of Alex- 
andria even concede that angels are always clothed 
with a subtle body, such as the philosophers of pagan- 
ism attribute to the daifiovst; ; they reserve pure 
spirituality for God alone, believing that it cannot 
exist in its perfect state in any creature. And St. 
Jude is entirely in accord with the conception of Gen- 
esis, when he represents the angels who united with 
the daughters of men as "not having preserved their 
dignity, and having left their own habitation," as 
deserving "to be bound with eternal chains and 
reserved for the judgment of the great day." The 
marriages of the bend hdelohim with the benoth hdd- 
ddm, as depicted by the pen of the author of the 
Jehovist document, and of the final editor, who 
copies him, are monstrous and criminal unions, which 

(i) Job iv. 18 ; xv. 15. 



\J 



342 The Beginnings of History. 

excite the anp;er of Yahveh against the man who 
connived at these acts, "because he is flesh," and 
" the spirit of God no longer prevails in him/^ 1 ) 
him whose daughters were the seducers of the angels. 
He is immediately punished by a preliminary visita- 
tion, the shortening of his life upon the earth. ( 2 ) And 
in the sacred book the gibborim, so glorified by pop- 
ular tradition, these men of renown, anshe hasshem, 
appear as a reprobate race, the offspring of sin, whose 
appearance gives the signal for the reign of violence 
and corruption which thenceforth pervades the 
earth, ( 3 ) until the day when the Deluge comes to 
punish them by extermination. There is something 
here analogous to the way in which the gods of the 
nations, represented at first as imaginary beings, or 
as adversaries opposed by Yahveh, are finally accepted 
as real, and transformed into demons by the Judaism 
of Alexandria and the writers of the New Testa- 
ment. ( 4 ) 

( x ) This is, as has been demonstrated by Schrader (Stadien zur 
Kritik und Erklserung der biblischen Urgeschichte, p. 75 et seq.), the 
true meaning of the phrase lo-yadon ruhi bddddm le'oldm. I would 
add that the verb dun, of which we have the only instance here, is 
evidently related to the Assyrian verb dananu, the use of which 
is, however, as frequent as it is possible to be in the language of 
Asshur. Nothing is better known than the two parallel processes 
by which the primitive biliteral roots of the Semitic languages 
became triliteral, being transformed into concave roots with medial 
waw, or into roots with the second and the third radical alike. 
The two modes of derivation have been employed simultaneously 
in many cases for a primitive root within the same idiom. 

( 2 ) Genes, vi. 3. ( 3 ) Genes, vi. 11 and 12 ; cf. 5-7. 

(*) In regard to the epoch when these various notions about 
the gods of the Gentiles were adopted, see W. Baudissin's fine 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 343 

The determination of the identity of the bene 
hdelohim and the benoth hddddm is not the only 
difficulty presented by the mysterious narrative with 
which the sixth chapter of Genesis opens. The 
mention of the nephilim in verse 4 gives rise to an 
equally obscure question, which has suggested a great 
number of theories. In the first place, the exact 
meaning of the phrase should be settled : hannephllim 
haiu bddreg baydmim hdhem vegam ahare-ken asher 
yabu bene hdelohim elbendth hddddm. However, I 
do not consider it necessary to enter upon an extended 
philological discussion in this place ; it will suffice to 
refer the reader to Schrader's satisfactory demonstra- 
tion^ 1 ) that the only correct grammatical translation 
is : " the giants were on the earth in these days, and 
also after that the children of God had come in unto 
the daughters of man." 

All the ancient versions translate nephilim 
"giants," and the modern exegetes do the same. 



dissertation, Die Anschauung des Alien -Testaments von den Goettern 
des Heidenthums, in the first volume of his Studien zur Seinitischen 
Religionsgeschichte. We will say, however, that Crusius (Hypom- 
nemata ad theologiam propheticam, vol. I., p. 144 et seq.) ; Beck 
(Einl. in das System d. christl. Lehre, p. 102 et seq. ; Die christl. 
Lehrwissenschaft, vol. I., p. 259); Von Hofmann [Weissagung und 
Erfiillung, Part 1, p. 120) ; Franz Delitzsch (Biblische Psychologie, 
2d Ed., p. 305 [Eng. Trans., 1867, p. 359. Tr.] ); H. Schultz 
(Alttestamentliche Theologie, vol II., p. 133 [cf. 2d Ed., p. 563 et 
seq. Tr.] ) ; and Knobel (Der Prophetismus der Hebrseer, vol. I., p. 
240), trace back a great deal farther than he does the idea that 
the strange gods actually existed as demons, and fancy that they 
find vestiges of such a notion in the very books of the ThoraJi, 
and in the Psalms. 

( J ) Studien zur Kritik und Erkleerung der biblischen Urgeschichte, 
pp. 99-108. 



344 The Beginnings of History. 

This signification is in fact necessitated by the second 
Biblical passage where the word is found, which 
also appertains to the Jehovist document. This is in 
Numbers xiii. 32, 33, in the course of the account 
given by the explorers sent from the desert to the 
land of Kena'an : "all the people that we have seen 
are men of high stature ; and we saw there even the 
nephilim, the children of 'Anaq, descendants of 
nephilim; we were in our own eyes as grasshoppers, 
and such were we also in their eyes." In the Ara- 
maic of the Targumim, Orion, or rather Sagittarius, 
the Kesil of the Hebrew, is called niphld,{ 1 ) an ex- 
pression rendered in the Syriac version by gaebord, 
" giant;" and it calls the great constellations of the 
heavens nephilin, " giants." ( 2 ) In the Medrash of 
the book of Ruth,(^) quoted by Castelli, there is a 
question as to the progeny of the union of a nephtl 
with a nephila, a giant with a giantess. All this 
shows plainly that nephilim is not the designation of 
a special race, a particular people, but is a general 
term to designate " giants." ( 4 ) 

(i) Job ix. 9. (*) Is. xiii. 10. 

( 3 ) ii. 1. [see Castelli, Heptaglott. , under hsi; Chald., col. 
2361. Tr.] 

( 4 ) In regarding nephilim not as a proper name, but as a sub- 
stantive of a general nature, which is its true character, the 
question which has agitated so many commentators requires no 
answer. This question, which Delitzsch {Comment, lib. d. Genes., 
3d Ed., p. 328 [cf. 4th Ed., p. 197. Tr.]) solves in the negative, 
and Schrader (Studien zur Kritik und Erklserung d. bibl. Urge- 
schichte, pp. 102, 103') affirmatively, is as to whether the nephilim 
of the book of Numbers should be considered as the descendants 
of the antediluvian nephilim. There is no reason for supposing 
a tie of kinship between them. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 345 

The etymology of the word has so far remained 
obscure. It is usually traced back to the root ndphal, 
"to fall," and following from that "to throw oneself, 
to pounce," upon some one. This conceded, some, like 
Raschi, regard the nephUim as fallen angels/ 1 ) which 
becomes utterly absurd when the sons of 'Anaq are 
in question, as in Numbers ; Kimchi, quite as unrea- 
sonably, fancies that the giants were thus named 
because men "fell into a fright" on seeing them; 
Aquila translates it i7rc7rc7TTOPTS£, and Symmachus 
ficouoc, meaning "those who throw themselves vio- 
lently" on men and oppress them, and this explana- 
tion is the only reasonable one, if the derivation 
from the root ndphal be admitted. ( 2 ) But this deri- 
vation is doubtful ; some other etymologies have 
been proposed,( 3 ) the last of which is that of Tuch( 4 ) 
and of Schrader,( 5 ) associating ndphil with the root 
paid, "to separate, to distinguish," which has in 
the niphal the acceptation of "to be marvellous, 
notorious, enormous." I consider this positively 
settled by the discovery which I have made on a 
small fragment of an Accadic- Assyrian lexico- 
graphic table, one of the results of the explorations 

(*) See Hasse, Entdeckungen, Part II., p. 62 ; Delitzsch, Com- 
ment, ub. d. Genes., 3d Ed., p. 324. [cf. 4th Ed., p. 194. Tr.] 

( 2 ) Gesenius, Thesaur., vol. II., p. 899; Keil, Genesis und Exo- 
dus, p. 88. [2d Ed., 1866, p. 94 ; Eng. Trans., 1861, p. 137. Tr.] 

( 3 ) Ewald's (Jahrbiicher, vol. VII., p. 18) is utterly inadmis- 
sible. 

(*) Kommentar -liber die Genesis, p. 159. [2d Eel., by Arnold and 
Merx, p. 125. Tr.] 

( 5 ) Studien zur Kritik und Erklserung der biblischen Urgeschichte, 
p. 99. 



346 The Beginnings of History. 

of Layard at Kuyoundjik, which, after many vicis- 
situdes, has been stranded in a private collection 
in Paris, of the Assyrian word naplu (the exact 
correspondent of the Hebrew ndphil, and at the 
same time undoubtedly derived from the root 
paid), serving to explain the Accadian usu-gal, liter- 
ally " exceptional in greatness," the use of which, as 
signifying "ogre," in Assyrian-Semitic usugallu,( l ) 
and as an adjective with the signification of " excel- 
lent," in Assyrian basmu,( 2 ) is familiar to us through 
other examples. The word naplu — ndphil bears, 
moreover, internal evidence, in its formation, of an 
Assyrian origin. The fact is, that names formed by 
the prefix of a servile n, derived from the niphal 
voice of the verbs, occupy a much more important 
place in this idiom than in any of the other Semitic 

(!) Syllabary A, No. 125. The reading ukugallu is settled by 
the variation ustgallu of the monolith of Asshur-nacir-abal (col. 1, 
1. 19 [Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, I., pi. 17. Tn.] ). It is the 
Accadian word adopted into Semitic-Assyrian as a borrowed 
word. 

The signification "ogre" is plainly apparent from the following 
passages : 

Kakkaka ulugallu la istu pisu imtav la inattuku, yar. damu la 
izarruru, "thy weapon is an ogre, from whose mouth venom does 
not depart:" Cuneif. Inscr. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 20, 3, 
1. 15, 16. Kakku sa kima usugalli salamta ikkalu, "the weapon 
which, like the ogre, devours entirely:" Cuneif. Inscr. of West. 
Asia, vol. II., pi. 19, 2. 1. 61-62. Cf. vol. IV., pi. 5, col. 1, 1. 
14-15, where one of the seven evil spirits who fight against the 
moon has the form of a usu\_gallu\. Asshur-nayir-abal, in the 
passage cited above, is entitled ustgallu idku, "a powerful 
ogre." 

( 2 ) Cuneif. Imcr. of West. Asia, vol. II., pi. 27, 1. 63, a-b. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 347 

languages^ 1 ) Outside of the infinitives vocalized in 
naqtal, we find five different types of such names : 

1) Nomina mutati: napharu, "collection, gather- 
ing, totality/ 7 from paharu ; naramu, "preferred, 
favored, delight," from ra,mu (rtim) ; namragu, 
"rough, difficult,' 7 from maragu; nannaru, "lumi- 
nous, illuminator," from ndru (nahar) ; narhabatu, 
" chariot," from rakabu ; 

2) Nomina permanentis : nabnitu, " creature, pro- 
duction," from band ; 

3) Nomina mutati: nimiqu, nimequ, "profound 
understanding, mysterious wisdom," from emiqu ; 

4) Nomen mutati: nihlalu y "completion, achiev- 
ment," from halalu ; 

5) Nomen mutati : numharu, " a thing collected, 
received," from maharu; 

6) Nomen permanentis : nadannu, " fortified, rein- 
forced," from dananu ; naparlzu, " diminished, de- 
fective, wanting," from parahu. 

Among the Assyrian names which are known to 
us through the Biblical transcriptions, and whose 
original form has not yet been discovered, those of 
Nimrod, from the root maradu, and of the god 
Nibhaz y ( 2 ) most probably Niphaz, from the root 
pahazffl belong to the same formation. 

C 1 ) Oppert, Elements de la grammaire assyrienne, 2d Ed., p. 100 ; 
Sayce, Assyrian Grammar for Comparative Purposes, p. 107. 

(*) 2 Kings xvii. 31. 

( 3 ) Derivations from Semitic roots, according to this mode of 
formation, have been erroneously sought for in the names Ninip, 
the reading of which is more than doubtful, Nergal and Ninua, 
which are not derived from ragalu and navu, but are corruptions 
of the Accadian JVe-urugal, "lord of the abode of the dead" 



VJ 



348 The Beginnings of History. 

The interpetations for the words vegam ahare-hen 
asher have always been extraordinarily varied, while, 
on the contrary, since the time of the Septuagint, 
Philo and Josephus, the general understanding of 
verse 4, as identifying the nephilim with the gibborim, 
and acknowledging them to be the issues of the 
union of the "sons of God" with "the daughters of 
men," has been almost unanimous. Nevertheless, 
these two renderings seem to me inexact, contrary to 
the true meaning of the text ; and on this point I am 
entirely at one with F. W. Farrar,( x ) J. J. Stewart 
Perowne,( 2 ) and Keil.( 3 ) 

Schrader( 4 ) appears to me to have definitely settled 
the philological impossibility of taking the words 
hannephilim haiu bddreg bayamim hdhem as though 
they were preceded by vaiehi,( 5 ) that is, as expressing 
the idea that the giants made their first appearance 
then upon the earth. The meaning cannot be other 
than as appears in the following phrases : 

(Fried. Delitzsch, G. Smith's Chaldseische Genesis, p. 275 et seq.), 
and JVi-nda, "repose of the gods" (Fried. Delitzsch, Assyrische 
Lesestucke, 2d Ed., p. 13 [Schrifttafel, No. 141. Tr.] ). 

f 1 ) In Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, article Giants, vol. I., p. 
686. [Am. Ed., 1869-71, Vol. II., p. 910. Tr.] 

C 2 ) In the same Dictionary, article Noah, vol. II., p. 564. [Am. 
Ed., vol. III., p. 2177. Tr.] 

(3) Genesis und Exodus, p. 89 [2d Ed., 1866, p. 94 ; Eng. Trans., 
1864, p. 137. Tr.]. 

( 4 ) Studien zur Kritik und Erklxrung der biblischen Urgeschichte, 
pp. 100-102. 

( 5 ) We have a very characteristic example in Gen. vii. 10 of 
this last construction and of the meaning involved in it : vaiehi 
leshib l ath hayamim time hammabbul haiu l al haarec, " and it came to 
pass, after seven days the waters of the Deluge were on the earth." 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 349 

Genes, xii. 6 : vehakkena'ani dz bddreg, "and the 
Kena'ani (was) then in the land." 

Genes, xiii. 7 : vehakkena'ani vehapperizzi dz yshdb 
bddreg, "and the Kena'ani and the Perizzi then 
inhabited the land." 

Like these, it is a simple indication of epoch, and 
the words with which the fourth verse of the sixth 
chapter begins have no more to do with the origin of 
the nephilim than the two sentences with which we 
have compared it have to do with the origin of the 
Kena'anini. 

It is, on the other hand, impossible for me to follow 
Schrader,^) when he associates veydldu Idhem with 
the nephilim, and Mmmdh gibborim with these and 
their children, as distinct from those born of the 
union of the bene hdelohim with the bendth hddddm. 
On the contrary, in ydbu bene* hdelohim el-benoth 
hddddm veydldu Idhem, it seems to me evident that 
conformably to the generally accepted interpretations, 
and according to the most ancient versions, the two 
propositions joined by the copula have the same 
subject, and the children whose birth is mentioned 
are the issues of the unhallowed unions. As to 
hemmdh gibborim, I can only understand it as 
referring to these children, and not to the nephilim, 
who are spoken of at the beginning of the verse.( 2 ) 

(*) Studien zur Kritilc und Erfclserung der biblischen Urgeschichte, 
p. 110 

( 5 ) Franz Delitzsch (Commentar iiber die Genesis, p. 238 [3d 
Ed. — 4th Ed., p. 197. Tr.] ) also understands it in this way; 
but considering the opening of the verse as an account of the 
origin of the nephilim, he is led on to the gratuitous supposition, 



350 The Beginnings of History, 

The elliptic construction, veydldu lahem hemmdh 
gibborim, with the omission of the regimen of the 
verb, benim,( l ) is an exactly parallel case with one 
constantly recurring in the Chalclseo-Assyrian augu- 
ral tables of prognostics furnished by abnormal 
births : 

enuva nestu talid va uzun nesi issakkan, "behold, 
a woman brings forth, and there is (upon her child) 
the ear of a lion." 

enuva nestu talid va uzun imnusu ul ibasi, "be- 
hold, a woman brings forth, and its right ear (that of 
the child) does not exist."( 2 ) 

Chapter vL, verse 4, of Genesis, as it strikes me, 
cannot be understood as signifying anything but that 
from the union of the "sons of God" and "the 

unauthorized by any statement of the text, that there were two 
successive generations, issues of the marriages of the "sons of 
God" with the "daughters of men," first the giants, afterwards 
a less gigantic generation of heroes. 

(') This may he seen also in Genesis v., 8; x., 21. 

(*) Ouneif. Inscr. of West. Asia, vol. III., pi. 65, 1 [1. 1, 2, obv. 
Tr.]. 

The form is the same in the tables of prognostics made up from 
the monstrous births of horses (Cuneif. Inscr. of West. Asia, vol. 
III., p. Go, 2 [rev., 1. 53, Gl. Tr.] ): 

enuva sustu (?) talid va cupri nesi issakkanic, "behold, a mare 
brings forth, and the nails (of the young one) are those of a 
lion ;" 

enuva sustu (?) talid va indlu tcl ibasd, "behold, a mare brings 
forth, and its eyes (those of the young one) do not exist." 

When, on the other hand, the issue is an animal of another 
species than the mother, the regimen of the verb aladu is ex- 
pressed [Ibid., rev., 1. 59, 58. Tr.] : 

enuva sustu (?) kalba talid, "behold a mare brings forth a dog;" 

enuva sustu (?) nesa talid, "behold, a mare brings forth a lion." 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 351 

daughters of men" was born that race of heroes so 
famous in legend ; and this came to pass in the days 
of the giants, for men were of that description when 
the angels came in to the women of earth, as well as 
after this event, in the days of the heroes, the issues 
of these monstrous and unhallowed unions. 

Here we have the expression of the belief, common 
among the ancients, that the men of the earliest ages 
vastly exceeded in stature those who followed 
them^ 1 ) just as their lives were immensely longer. 

Among the Greeks, the notion of the gigantic sta- 
ture of primitive men( 2 ) was intimately connected 
with the conception of their autochthony, and in 
their case, as in that of the giants who personified 
cosmic forces, ( 3 j the name of ycyavze^ was considered 
as a synonym of yrjsps7^, " earth-born."( 4 ) Arcadia 
was sometimes called Gigantis,( 5 ) and Lycia, Gigan- 
tiaffl from the supposed character of their primitive 
inhabitants. Traditions concerning a population of 
giants, born of the earth, are found in the southern 

(!) Pliny, Hist. Nat, vii. 16; Aul. Gell., Noct Attic, iii., x., 
10, 11. 

(2) Welcker, Griechische Goetterlehre, vol. I., p. 787 et seq. 

( 3 ) Ibid., p. 791 et seq. Welcker, more satisfactorily than any 
one else, has made clear the distinction to be established between 
these two classes of beings, in the Hellenistic traditions of the 
Giants. 

(*) This qualification is also sometimes given to the Spartans 
of Thebes, as being born of the earth : Argum. ad Eurip. Phmniss., 
ed. Guelferb; Nonn., Narrat., 18, in Creuzer, Meletem., vol. I., 
p. 92. 

(5) Steph. Byz., s. v. 'APKA2. 

( 6 ) Hesych. et Etym. magn., s. v. Tiyavria; Lexic. Rhetor., p. 
842. 



352 The Beginnings of History. 

part of the island of Rhodes^ 1 ) and at Cos.( 2 ) Cyzi- 
cus displayed a causeway within hex territory sup- 
posed to have been the work of these same giants. ( d ) 
In the Odyssey there is reference to Eurymedon, 
king of the people of the Giants, whose daughter, 
by the operation of the god Poseidon, became mother 
of Nausithoos, first king of the Phseacians, ( 4 ) who 
themselves gave out that they were related to the 
Cyclops and Giants. ( 5 ) A gigantic stature is also 
ascribed to the Lestrygons,( 6 ) in the same poem, and 
Welcker( 7 ) has well observed that in the traditions 
of Attica the Pallantides possess all the characteristics 
of the savage giants of primitive generations. 

This idea that the heroes of the earliest times were 
genuine giants has become a commonplace in classic 
poetry, ( 8 ) and seems to be corroborated by the disco- 
veries of remains of great fossil mammifers, which 
have been taken for the bones of heroes seven, ( 9 ) ten, 
eleven cubits high, or even taller. ( 10 ) Berossus, fol- 
lowing the Chaldseo-Baby Ionian tradition, said that 

(!) Diod. Sic, v., 55. 

( 2 ) Hippocrat., Epist., p. 1292 [Ed. Foes., II. Tr.]. 

( 3 ) Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod., Argonaut., i., v. 987. 
\J (*) Ochjss., H, v. 56-60. (*) Odyss., H, v. 206. 

(«) Odyss., K, v. 120. 

( 7 ) Griechische Gcetterlehre, vol. I., p. 790. 

( 8 ) Homer, Iliad, E, v. 302 et seq. ; Lucret., ii., v. 1151 ; Virgil, 
JEneid, xii., v. 900; Juven., Sat., xv., v. 69. 

(9) Herodot., I., 68; Solin, I., 84. 

( 10 ) Pausan., I., 35, 5; VIIL, 29, 3, and 32, 4.- Joseph. {An- 
tiq. Jud., v., 2, 3) and even St. Augustine (Be civit. Dei., xv., 9) 
speak of discoveries of this sort as proofs of the existence of real 
giants, and it is well known that such an idea was not generally 
discredited before our own century. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men.. 353 

the first men were of a prodigious stature and 
strength, and he represented them as retaining these 
characteristics during the first generations after the 
Deluge. ( x ) It was upon the narrative of the histo- 
rian of Chaldea, with whom he was more or less 
indirectly familiar, as well as on the national tradi- 
tions of Armenia, rather than the sixth chapter of 
Genesis, as has been sometimes said, that Mar Abas 
Katina founded his story( 2 ) of the ancient giants of 
Mesopotamia and Armenia, their violence and the 
war between the two most terrible among them all, 
Bel the Babylonian and Hai'gh the Armenian.( 3 ) All 
the Arab legends are unanimous in representing as 
giants the primitive and ante-Semitic peoples of the 
Arabian peninsula, the sons of <Ad and of 'Amliq, na- 
tions that were already extinct in a remote antiquity, 
whose origin is lost in the night of the ages,( 4 ) and 
who have left behind them a memory of wickedness 
and violence^ 5 ) According to the beautiful apocry- 
phal Apocalypse, known under the name of the fourth 
Book of Ezra,( 6 ) the stature of men has been grow- 

(!) Fragm. 17 of my edition. 

( 2 ) Cited by Moses of Khorene, I., 9 and 10. 

( 3 ) In the Armenian version of the Bible, the name of Haigh is 
used to translate the Hebrew Kesil, the Syriac gaeboro, the con- 
stellation of the celestial Giant (Job xxxviii. 31 ; Is. xiii. 10). Evi- 
dently this shows, as La Croze was the first to remark, that Haigh 
was undoubtedly a hero of the ancient popular mythology of 
Armenia, regarded as a giant and placed among the stars. 

(*) Num. xxiv. 20 calls 'Amaleq "the first-born of nations," 
reshith goim. 

( 5 ) On this tradition of the giant peoples of Arabia, see Knobel, 
Die Vcelkertafel der Genesis, pp. 179, 204 et seq., 234 et seq. 

(«) V., 52-55. 

23 



\J 



354 The Beginnings of History. 

ing less ever since the epoch of the Deluge. This is 
an am plifi cation of the idea which we have in the 
Talmudic legends, which represent Adam as endowed 
with prodigious size and strength^ 1 ) beyond that of all 
the giants who lived after him. These legends per- 
meated the oriental Christianity of the first centuries, 
and James of Edessa accepts them without a moment's 
hesitation. ( 2 ) Without going as far as that, St. Au- 
gustine ( 3 ) agrees as to the colossal stature of the first 
men, and furthermore thinks that among them lived 
giants who greatly exceeded them in size. 

We need not be surprised, therefore, to find in the 
antediluvian narrations of Genesis this popular belief, 
the universality of which attests its very ancient 
origin, and which may be unhesitatingly ranked 
among those originating at the time when the great 
civilized peoples of a remote antiquity, still clustering 
about the cradle of the race, enjoyed a contact suffi- 
ciently close for some common traditions. ( 4 ) To-day 
we have scientific proof that such belief has no real 
foundation, but is simply a product of the imagina- 

(!) Talm. Bab., Baba bathra, fol. 58; see Schroeter, in the 
Zeitschr. d. deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch., vol. XXIV., p. 285 ; Kohut, 
Die talmudische-midrasckische Adamssage, in vol. XXV. of the same 
journal, p. 75, etc. 

( 2 ) Schroeter, Erster Brief Jacob's von Edessa an Johannes den 
Styliten, in Zeitschr. d. deutschen Morgenl. Gesellsch., vol. XXIV., 
p.' 275. 

(*) Be civ. Dei, xv., 9. 

(*) Edward B. Tylor has not, to my thinking, laid enough 
stress upon this fact in his remark, otherwise most judicious, on 
the legends relating to the giant peoples : Primitive Culture, vol. I., 
pp. 348-354. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 355 

tion, and the popular fables and individual teratolo- 
gieal facts amassed indiscriminately and without 
critical knowledge by Sennert/ 1 ) Dom Calrnet,( 2 ) and 
some others, cannot contravene this positive fact. As 
far back as we can trace the vestiges of mankind, up 
to the races who lived in the quaternary period, side 
by side with the great mammifers of extinct species, ( 3 ) 
it may be proved that the medium height of our spe- 
cies has not been modified in the course of centuries, 
and that it has never exceeded its existent limits. It 
is well here to recall the wise and profound words of 
Dr. Reusch : " God gave a supernatural light to the 
writers of the Bible, but this supernatural light, like 
revelation in general, had for its sole object the mani- 
festation of religious truths, and not the communica- 
tion of profane knowledge; and we may, without 
violating the claims of these sacred writers upon 
our veneration, without weakening the dogma of 
inspiration, frankly acknowledge that in profane 
learning, consequently likewise as regards the phy- 
sical sciences, they are not one whit superior to their 
contemporaries, and even share the errors common to 
the epoch and to their nation. . . . Moses was 
not raised above the intellectual plane of his time, as 
far as science is concerned, by means of his inspira- 
tion ; furthermore, there is nothing to prove to us 

(*) Dissertatio historico-philologica de gigantibus, Wittemberg, 
1663. 

( 2 ) Dissertation sur les geants, in the first volume of his Bible, 
also reproduced in the first volume of Vence's Bible. 

(3) See De Quatrefages' beautiful book, L'espece humaine, Paris, 
1877. 



356 The Beginnings of History. 

that he might have so raised himself by study and 
his personal reflections."^) 

An idea of violence, of abuse of strength, and of 
revolt against heaven, is always associated with the 
tradition of the primordial giants. " It was," says 
Maury,( 2 ) "an ancient tradition that strong and pow- 
erful men, whom the popular imagination had pic- 
tured as giants, drew upon themselves the anger of 
heaven by their impiety, their pride and their arro- 
gance. These supposed giants were, in all proba- 
bility, nothing more than the first mortals who 
abused the superiority of their strength and their 
enlightenment to oppress their fellows. The knowl- 
edge which they possessed seemed to a credulous and 
ignorant populace a revelation given them by the 
gods, secrets which they had stolen from heaven. 
Whether the giants proclaimed themselves offspring 
of the divinities, or the superstition of a childish 
people believed them to be sons of heaven, they were 
looked upon as having sprung from the connection 
of the immortals with earth-born women. The 
priests, exclusive and jealous depositaries of knowl- 
edge, taught that finally these impious giants received 
the just punishment of their pride, having been 
destroyed by divine thunderbolts sent by the gods, 
whose power they had striven to emulate. Doubtless 
some great catastrophes, which put an end to the 
dominion of these tyrants, perhaps the revolution 
which gave over into the hands of the priests the 

(!) La Bible et la Nature, p. 27 (French Trans.). 
( 2 ) Article Diable, in the Encyclopedie nouvelle. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 357 

power which belonged in the beginning to the mili- 
tary chiefs, were represented as acts of divine anger; 
however it may be, this legend was early introduced 
into Chaldsea and thence into Greece." There is 
more than one exception to be taken to this explana- 
tion, which supposes the universality of an altogether 
special event, the combats of the Kchatriyas and 
Brahmans of India,^) and the triumph of a power- 
fully organized sacerdotal caste over the warriors, 
who in the end succumb to its rule. It is certain 
that the same state of things did not exist among the 
generality of nations, and indeed we are forced at the 
present epoch to abandon the illusion of a mysterious 
and primitive priestly power, when the priests were 
depositaries of all knowledge, an illusion commonly 
credited at the time when Creuzer's theories were 
uppermost in the science of religions. But, to my 
thinking, Maury is quite right in seeing in this 
universal tradition of the primitive giants, their vio- 
lent and impious acts, solely a religious and physical 
myth. There is undoubtedly something of a historic 
memory here, like an echo and an expressive repre- 
sentation of the unrestrained corruption and un- 
bridled brutality, which the Biblical tradition reveals 
to us among the latter God-forgetting antediluvians, 
at the time when " the giants were upon the earth," 
a hideous condition of things which undoubtedly ex- 
isted, since the conscience of man in preserving the 
memory of it was unanimous in recognizing a divine 

( x ) See the summary of the principal traditions relating to this 
fact in Fr. Lenormant's Manuel d'histoire ancienne de V Orient, 3d 
Ed., vol. III., pp. 557-584. 



358 The Beginnings of History. 

punishment in the cataclysm which overwhelmed the 
guilty populations. 

We shall see in the following chapter that among 
all the peoples who retained the tradition of the 
Deluge, this terrible catastrophe is represented as the 
effect of celestial anger provoked by the crimes of 
the first men, who, as we have seen, are generally 
said to have been giants. This impiety of the ante- 
diluvians towards the gods, as well as the violence 
of their ways, is indicated with especial clearness in 
the Chaldsean narrative of the cataclysm, which has 
come down to us in the original text, and offers 
a singularly close resemblance to the Bible record. 
The same idea of violence and impiety is associated 
also with those gigantic nations which continued 
to flourish in the ages immediately succeeding the 
Deluge^ 1 ) Berossus said that " the first men (after 

(*) The Hebrews believed also that the earliest mortals of the 
postdiluvian times were still gigantic. This is implied by the theory 
in the Fourth Book of Ezra in regard to the gradual dwindling 
of human stature from this time on. The first populations of 
Palestine, the predecessors of the Kena'anites and Semites, some 
remnants of whom were found at the time of the arrival of the 
v J Bene-Yisrael in the Promised Land, populations which really 
appear to have been of lofty stature (we consider that point in 
our thirteenth chapter), had grown to be veritable giants in the 
popular imagination, nephilim, like those of the earliest days. 
There is a Jewish tradition, transmitted to the Christians, fol- 
lowed by St. Augustine (De civit. Dei, xv., 23), where he states 
that giants were as numerous in the first ages after the Deluge as 
before. And it is on the same principle that Aben-Ezra, inter- 
preting the opening sentence of Genesis vi. 4, as did the Septua- 
gint: "Giants were then on the earth, and also afterwards," 
without establishing the connection between ahare-Mn and asher, 
understands "and also afterwards ' as meaning "and also after 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 359 

the cataclysm), inordinately proud of their strength 
and their gigantic size, began to despise the gods and 
to fancy themselves superior to them/'Q and this 
impious violence is associated with the tradition of 
the Tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues, 
recorded also in Genesis, of which we shall treat in 
our fourteenth chapter. Mar Abas Katina, who in his 
book, antedated by several centuries, combined the pop- 
ular narratives of the Armenians regarding their ori- 
gin, and the historical records of Grseco-Baby Ionian 
literature, which were copious, after the manner of Be- 
rossus, makes the following statement: "When man- 
kind were scattered all over the face of the earth, 
giants of extraordinary strength lived among them, and 
being always possessed with fury, they drew their 
swords each one against his neighbor, and strove con- 
tinually for the mastery." ( 2 ) We are not so circum- 
stanced as to be able to say positively from which of the 
two sources, drawn upon by this Christian priest of 
the school of Edessa, who represented his history 
as having been written during the time of the first 
Arsacides, this story has been taken, although its 
analogy with the language of Berossus suggests the 
Grseco-Babylonian. But his account merits none the 
less to be received as an echo of a more ancient 
tradition, and possibly as confirming the exactness of 
the extracts of Abydenus ? abridgement of Berossus, 
inserted by Eusebius in his Chronicle. 

the Deluge," an interpretation the fundamental rendering of 
which is exact, though it cannot be grammatically applied to the 
sentence. 

( x ) Fragm. 17 of my edition. ( 2 ) Ap. Moses of Khorene ? i. 9. 



VJ 



360 The Beginnings of History. 

The tradition, not only of the existence of primi- 
tive giants, but likewise of their unrestrained vio- 
lence, of their rebellion against heaven, and their 
punishment, is one which is common to the Aryan 
no less than to the Kushite and Semitic peoples.. 
But in the exuberance of mythological growth, for 
which Aryan genius has a natural propensity, this 
tradition of primitive history is involved and con- 
founded in an often inextricable manner with purely 
naturalistic myths, which depict the struggles in the 
organization of the universe between the celestial 
deities and the personifications of telluric forces. 
Therefore I should not venture to follow JosephusC 1 ) 
and a goodly number of modern interpreters in 
showing a connection between the indications of 
Genesis concerning the antediluvian nsphilim and 
gibborim, and the violence with which the whole 
earth was filled after the Deluge, on the one hand, 
and the Gigantomachy of the Hellenes, on the other. 
This last myth, truth to tell, is exclusively natural- 
istic ; though the plastic genius of Greece treats with 
its habitual anthropomorphism the personages of 
these earth-born giants, they yet remain absolutely 
foreign to humanity, and continue to be solely the 
representatives of the forces of nature, ( 2 ) no serious 
mythology ever having entertained the idea of asso- 
ciating the Gigantomachy with the cycle of traditions 
of the beginnings of human history. The same 
thing is true of the battle of the Asuras against the 
Devas, or celestial gods, related so poetically in the 

(i) Antiq. Jud., i. 3, 1. 

( 2 ) Maury, Histoire des religions de la Grlce, vol. I., p. 217. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 361 

Astlkamritamantha parva, which forms one part of 
the Adlriparva of the Mahdbhdrata.i^) This myth is 
the counterpart in India to the Gigantomachy among 
the Hellenes ; here, too, the combat is entirely physi- 
cal ; it springs from the very womb of nature, and 
if any trace of reference to an historic event of primi- 
tive antiquity could be found in it, it would be 
nothing more than the triumph of the celestial and 
luminous Aryan divinities over the gloomy Chtho- 
nian gods of an older population, who, being van- 
quished, sank to the condition of demons. ( 2 ) 

The same idea of the victory of the new gods who 
supplanted the old ones, is also manifestly combined 
with the fundamental cosmogonic myth in the poetic 
narratives of the Titanomachy, quite distinct from 
the Gigantomachy, that is, the struggle sustained 
by the Olympian deities against the Titans, auxilia- 
ries of Cronos, as an outcome of which the latter 
is dethroned, while at the same time the sons of 
Uranos and Gaia are precipitated into Tartarus. ( 3 ) 
The localization and the epic form with which 
Hesiod has clothed this narrative were influenced by 
the tradition of a great convulsion of the terres- 
trial crust, occasioned by the breaking forth of sub- 

C 1 ) Included in the first volume of the edition of the great 
Indian Epopee, published in Calcutta, in the first volume of 
Fauche's French translation, and in the Fragments du Mahtibhdrata, 
translated by Th. Pavie. 

( 2 ) See the observations of Baron d'Eckstein, De la legende du 
Manthanam et de sa localite, in the Journal Asiatique of October- 
November, 1855. 

( 3 ) Hesiod, Theogon., v. 617-735; Apollodor., i. 2, 1; see 
Schoemann, De Titanibus Hesiodeis, Greifswald, 1844. 



362 The Beginnings jof History. 

terranean fires, the scene of action being the Grecian 
countries and the witnesses the men already inhab- 
iting them,( x ) doubtless that convulsion known to 
geologists as the upheaval of Tenarus, the last of the 
Plutonian crises which overwhelmed the ancient 
world, the effects of which were felt from the centre 
of France to the coasts of Syria. Italy, in fact, was 
shattered throughout its length ; Tuscany broke forth 
in volcanoes ; the Phlegrian Fields burst into flames ; 
Stromboli and Etna experienced their first eruptions. 
In Greece, Taygetus rose in the midst of the Pe- 
loponnesus, and the new islands of Melos, Cimolos, 
Siphnos, Thermia, Delos, Thera, emerged out of the 
seething waters of the ^Egean Sea. The men who 
witnessed this frightful convulsion of nature natur- 
ally imagined themselves to be in the midst of a 
battle of the Titans, issued forth from the Chthonian 
Sea, against the celestial powers, combined with the 
Hecatonchirs, other terrestrial forces in conflict with 
the Titans, and their imagination depicted these tre- 
mendous adversaries, the ones stationed on the summit 
of Othrys, the others on the summit of Olympus, 
reciprocally endeavoring to crush each other by hurl- 
ing burnina; rocks. 

But in the myth of the Titanomachy, as contrasted 
with the Gigantomachy, there is something involved 
beside a struggle between the forces of nature. There 
should also be taken into account an important cir- 
cumstance, mentioned in a part of the Greek tradi- 

( x ) This standpoint has been admirably set forth and developed 
with remarkable talent by Ch. Benoit: Archives des Missions Sci- 
ent/Jiques, first series, vol. I. (1850), pp. 626-632. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 363 

tions, which we put aside in our first chapter that we 
might say a word on the subject here, returning to it 
still more at length in the tenth chapter, to the effect 
that mankind sprang from the blood of the Titans^ 1 ) 
The conception of the sons of Uranos and Gaia, 
preceding the Olympian gods, as we find it ex- 
plained and completely developed in Hesiod's Iheo- 
gony^) has this special feature, that side by side with 
the personifications of the forces of nature in the four 
elements, forces represented as still violent, exuberant, 
and irregular, we find certain prototypes of primitive 

( J ) Homer, Hymn in Apoll., v. 386 ; Orph., Hymn, xxxvii. ; 
ProcL, In Cratyl., p. 82, cf. pp. 59 and 114 [eel. Boissonade] ; 
Dio Chrysost., Orat., xxx., p. 550; Olympiodor., In Phsedon., ap. 
Mustoxyd. et Schin., Anecd., Part iv., p. 4; see Preller, Die Vor- 
stellungen der Alten vom Ursprung des menschlichen Geschlechts, in 
vol. VII. of the Goettingen PMlologus ; Gerhard, Griechische My- 
thologies \ 636 ; Maury, Histoire des religions de la Grece, vol. I., 
p. 217. 

C 2 ) On the Titans, see principally: Kanne, Analect. Philol., 
p. 68 et seq. ; Mythol., vol. I., p. 17 et seq. ; G. Hermann, De 
Mythologia grsecorum antiquissima, 1817; Boettiger, Kunstmuseum, 
vol. I., p. 217 et seq.; Welcker, JEschyl. Trilog., p. 38 et seq.; 
Ottfr. M tiller, Proleg. z. ein. Wissenschaftl. Mythologie, p. 374 et seq. 
[Eng. Trans., 1844, p. 805 et seq. Tr.] ; Gerhard, Prodrom. 
mythol. Kunsterklserung , p. 14 et seq. ; Ch. Lenormant, Nouv. gal. 
myth., p. 15 et seq.; Weiske, Prometheus, p. 316 et seq.; Schoe- 
mann, De T'danibus Hesiodeis, Greifswald, 1844, and Zu JEschyl. 
Prometheus (Greifswald, 1844 [also in his Opusc. Acad., vol. III. 
Tr.] ), p. 104 et seq.; Schwenck, Griech. Mythol., p. 1 et seq.; 
Schwenck, Mythol. d. Perser, p. 393 et seq. ; E. Braun, Griech. 
Goctterlehre, \ 185 et seq., 205 et seq.; articles Titanen in Jacobi's 
Handwcerterbuch der Mythologie, and in Pauly's Realencyclopsedie 
(vol. VI., p. 2001 et seq.); Preller, Griech. Mythol, 2d Ed., vol. I., 
pp. 36-54; Gerhard, Griech. Mythol., \\ 106, 109, and 110; 
"Welcker, Griech. Goetterlehre, vol. I., pp. 261-291. 



XJ 



364 The Beginnings of History. 

humanity, no less exaggerated and imperfectly regu- 
lated, as to power, energy, and stature, veritable 
representatives of the giants of the first ages, as ac- 
cepted by Chaldsean tradition. I refer to Iapetos 
and his sons, Atlas, Menoitios, Prometheus, and Epi- 
metheus, ancestors and symbolic types of the human 
race^ 1 ) who are known as Titans like their father. ( 2 ) 
The tradition bearing upon them is all the more 
remarkable from the fact that the Bible accepts 
the Titan Iapetos of the Greek legend, retaining his 
name of Aryan origin under the form Yapheth,( 3 ) 
as one of the sons of Noah, and progenitor of one of 
the great races of men, the Aryans. As Preller has 
justly remarked, ( 4 ) the idea of antagonism with the 
Olympian gods is specially associated with the race of 
Iapetos. Menoitios, whose name characterises him as 
parallel with the Manu of the Hindus, a representa- 
tive of "man" in general,' 5 ) is a blasphemer of the 
gods, and Zeus hurls his thunder at him, and flings 
him into Tartarus, to punish his violence and im- 
piety. ( 6 ) Prometheus,( 7 ) with his brother, Epime- 

( 1 ) Hesiod, Then g on., v. 507-616; see Voelcker, Mythologie des 
japetischen Geschlechtes, Giessen, 1824 ; E. Braun, Griech. Goetter- 
lehre, \ 231 et seq. ; Gerhard, Griech. Mythol., \\ 114-116; Maury, 
Histoire des religions de la Grece, vol. I., p. 864; Welcker, Griech. 
Goetterlehre, vol. I., pp. 743-751. 

( 2 ) Ch. Lenormant, JVouv. gal. mythol., p. 15, note 11; Preller, 
Griech. Mythol., 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 41. 

( 3 ) On the purely Aryan character of this name, see Pictet, Les 
engines Indo-europeennes, vol. II., p. 626 et seq. 

(*) Griech. Mythol., 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 41. 

( 5 ) Pictet, Les origines Indo-europeennes, vol. II., p. 626. 

( 6 ) Hesiod, Theogon., v. 514 et seq.; Apollodor., i. 2, 3. 

( 7 ) In regard to this personage, besides Voelcker' s book, already 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 365 

theus, is the protagonist of a series of myths corre- 
sponding to the history of the first sin in Genesis, 
which drew upon him the chastisement of the anger 
of Zeus ; one of these myths has been considered by 
us in chapter ii., and we shall return to them in 
chapter x. In the Armenian narratives of Mar Abas ; 
Katina and of Moses of Khorene,^) Yapedosthe, the ' 
counterpart of the Greek Iapetos and of the Biblical 
Yapheth, whose name appears under a form which is 
doubtless indigenous, ( 2 ) is a giant, father of a race of 
giants, to which the national hero Haygh belongs. 
All these facts, the connection of which it is impossible 
to overlook, lead us to the conclusion that the tradi- 
tion which associated an idea of violence, of impiety, 
of revolt against heaven, and of divine punishment, 
with the belief that the first men were possessed of 
enormous size and strength, had its share, as much as 
the notion of the primordial struggles of physical 
forces, in the birth of the fundamental conception of 
Titanomachy, although the epic description of Hesiod 
utterly ignores the human side. 

This side is still more strongly marked in a third 
fable of the same family, found in the Greek 

cited, p. 375 et seq., see Welcker, Die JEschglische Trilogie, Prome- 
theus, Darmstadt, 1824; J. G. Weiske, Prometh. u. sein Mgthenkreis, 
Leipzig, 1842; E. von. Lasaulx, Prometheus, die Sage und ihr Sinn, 
ein Beitrag zur Religionsphilosophie, in Studien des classischen Alter- 
thums (Ratisbon, 1854), p. 316 et seq.; Preller, Griech. Mythol., 
2d Ed., vol. I., pp. 71—79; Welcker, Griech. Goetterlehre, vol. I., 
pp. 756-770. 

( 1 ) I., 5, 8 and 9. 

( 2 ) Pictet, Les origines Indo-europeennes, vol. II., p. 627. 



366 The Beginnings of History. 

mythology, the fable of the Aloades/ 1 ) where the 
character of the antagonists of the gods is absolutely 
human, though marvellous ; and Preller ( 2 ) seems to 
me to be entirely in the right when he ranks this 
narrative, not in the class of naturalistic myths, but 
in that of myths which treat of the beginnings of the 
history of mankind. The Aloades, who are said to 
be of gigantic size, and whose names, Ephialtes 
(from S(fcdUofj.ac) and Otos (from wdiw), are exact 
synonyms of nephilim, if derived from the root nd- 
phal, are sons of Aloeus, the hero of the threshing- 
floor of the wheat, and of Iphimedea, the fruitful 
earth, whose products give strength ; they should be 
regarded, therefore, as personifications of the first agri- 
culturists, Avho, inordinately proud of their prodigious 
vigor, of their power and riches, think themselves 
capable of any thing, defy the gods and arm themselves 
to dethrone them.( 3 ) The tone of this legend leads 

(!) Homer, Iliad, E, v. 885; Odyss., A, v. 805 et seq. ; Pindar, 
Pyth., IV., v. 156; Apollodor., i., 7, 4; Pausan., IX., 22, 5; 20, 
1; Diod. Sic, V., 50 and 51; Hygin., Fab., 28; Philostrat., He- 
roic, I., 3; Vit. Sophist., II., 1 and 2; Virgil, JEneid, VI., v. 582; 
see Voelcker, Ueber die Alo'iden, in the year 1828 of the Kritische 
\j Bibliothek (Seebode) ; Eberz, Ueber die Fabel der Alo'iden, in the 
Zeitschr. far Alterthumswissenschaft for the year 1846 [No. 99, Sept., 
785. Tk,.] ; Wehrman, Ares und die Alo'iden, in vol. XVIII. of the 
Archiv fiir Philologie und Psedagogih ; Pott, in A. Kuhn's Zeitschr. 
fir vergleich. Sprachforschung, vol. IX., p. 205 et seq. 

( 2 ) Griech. MytJiol,, 2d Ed., vol. I., pp. 79-81. 

( 3 ) Tlato (Sympos., p. 190) and Aristotle (De Mundo, I.) cite 
the Aloades as types of the possible extent of human arrogance. 
Later on they are associated with the other giants and blasphemers 
of the gods: Virgil, Georg., I., v. 277 et seq.; Cul., v. 232; Stat., 
Thebaid, X., v. 848 et seq. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 367 

one to trace it back to the days when the ancestors of 
the Hellenic race, still living a pastoral life, regarded 
the population already attached to the soil, cultivat- 
ing the ground and inhabiting towns, with distrust 
and hostility ; it is the same spirit which makes of 
the first murderer, Qain, in Genesis, an agriculturist 
and builder of a town, while his victim, the innocent 
Habel, follows the pastoral life. The Aloades are 
builders and engineers, as well as agriculturists. 
They aim at nothing less than to change by their 
labors the very surface of the earth, making of the 
continent the sea, and of the sea a continent^ 1 ) It is 
even related that they began to build a tower, whose 
summit they designed should reach to heaven,( 2 ) 
manifestly a version, and the only one we know of in 
Greece, of the tradition of the Tower of Babel, as the 
story is told in Genesis, and as it existed in the 
Chaldseo-Babylonian cycle of legends in regard to 
the beginning of things. It was in the midst of 
these undertakings of insensate pride that they were 
struck by the bolts of the gods and precipitated into 
Tartarus. 

The sacred writers did not need to modify the 
general character of the traditions concerning the 
first ages of the human race, such as must have 
existed among the Hebrews as among the other 
Semitic and Aryan peoples, in order to represent the 
antediluvian nephilim and gibborim as generations 
full of violence and impiety. But the characteristic 

( x ) Apollodor., i., 7, 4. 

( 2 ) Philo., De Oonfus. Linguarum, 2; Origen, Adv. Cels., IV., 
p. 515 [ed. Paris]. 



\J 



368 The Beginnings of History. 

peculiar to them, making them stand absolutely 
apart from the conceptions of paganism, is the con- 
demnation of the superhuman origin attributed to 
th?se heroes, and the way in which their guilty and 
accursed character is dwelt upon, with the con- 
sequences resulting from it in the system of a 
rigorous monotheism. Yahveh is a jealous God; 
He will not endure to have part of the worship 
which is His due given to other gods, still less may 
His enemies be honored in any way whatsoever. In 
paganism, on the contrary, the terror inspired by 
the infernal and hostile powers induces the erection 
of altars to them, side by side with those of the 
celestial and protecting deities. All Gentiles were 
more or less genuine Yezidis, devil-worshipers. 
Among the Greeks, in spite of the fact that the 
Titans are the vanquished adversaries of the Olym- 
pian gods, incarcerated and punished in Tartarus, 
they are nevertheless feared, and in many localities 
divine honors are paid them^ 1 ) in order to disarm 
their hostility, and in more than one instance this 
cult assumes the aspect of an actual protestation 
against an unjust defeat, as in the case of Prometheus ; 
the Titan chained to the rock on Caucasus, in the 
tragedy of iEschylus, is a noble victim of the supe- 
rior power of Zeus ; he is punished for having been 
the benefactor of mankind. The Aloades themselves 
have a temple at Naxos.( 2 ) There is nothing like 
this in the mind of the narrator in Genesis. The 
nephilim, and even the gibhorim, notwithstanding 

(!) See Gerhard, Griech. MythoL, § 128. 

( 2 ) Corp. inner, grsec. [Boeckh, vol. II., p. 355. Tr.], No. 2420. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 369 

their birth of the bend hdelohtm, are men of extraor- 
dinary power, yet nothing but men, impious beings, 
justly punished, whose fate is to serve as an example 
to future generations, and the Jehovist writer puts 
his audience on their guard against the corrupt mix- 
ture of admiration and condemnation which doubt- 
less pervaded the popular legends relating to these 
personages among the Bene-Yisrael, as among the 
neighboring peoples. 

With the caution induced by these necessary 
remarks regarding the special spirit which inspired 
the Biblical writers, we must acknowledge that 
Chaldseo-Baby Ionian tradition, in the fragments of 
it which we possess, offers us incontestable traces 
of generations of heroes of the primitive ages, 
whose impious and violent character, and sinister 
fate following upon an episode of formidable ter- 
restrial power, recall the circumstances of which we 
read in Genesis vi. 1-4. These are heroes who have 
dared to measure themselves with the gods, and who, 
notwithstanding their glory and their exploits, were 
not judged worthy of being admitted to that place 
where the heroes favored by the divinities make their 
abode, in " the land of the silver sky, with a soil that 
does not require cultivation, where the good things 
of blessing are given for nourishment, the joyous 
festival for light, where one dwells with the gods, 
far removed from misery and sadness/^ 1 ) in those 

( x ) Cuneif. Inscr. of West. Asia, vol. III., pi. 66, rev., 1. 28-38, 
c, conclusion of a prayer for the king, in which, after the good 
things of earth have been asked for him, there follows : ana mudin 
tave annuti — mat same kaspi kisalli la pidni — tabtu §a birikiti — 

24 



VJ 



370 The Beginnings of History. 

Elysian Fields whither, by the order of his father, 
Ea, Marduk, he "who raises the dead to life/^ 1 ) car- 
ries up the spirit (itiukku) of Eabani, rescued from 
tlie infernal abodes, in the last canto of the Epic of 
Uruk.( 2 ) Like the Titans and the Aloades in Tar- 
tarus, the heroes of whom we are speaking remain 
imprisoned in the "Land without return 7 ' (irgit la 
tared), an abode of desolation, distinguished by fea- 
tures altogether analogous to those of the Hebrew 
Shedl; there they are associated with the mass of 
vulgar dead and with the monsters of primordial 
chaos, precipitated into these gloomy regions in con- 
sequence of the defeat of their queen, Tiamat. When 
Ishtar, the goddess of heaven, decides to descend 
to the Land without return, to Hades,( 3 ) she says 
that she will find there "the crown- wearers, who 
governed the earth from the earliest times, to whom 

ana akalsunu — u kiruru tabu — ana nurimnu — libli bulda — Uri 
adi inqa — iqribi — sa Hani — [a$i]but mat Alsur, "to complete 
these wishes, may he have a portion in the land of the silver sky, 
of the soil without culture, (where) the good things of blessing 
(are) for their nourishment and the joyous festivity for their 
illumination. The cessation of misery and sadness will be his 
with the gods who dwell in Assyria." See Schrader, Die Hcellen- 
fahrt der Istar, pp. 71-87. 

(!) Sa mita bulluta irammu : Cuneif. Inscr. of West. Asia, vol. 
IV., pi. 29, 1, obv., 1. 17-18; cf. rev., 1. 11. 

( 2 ) G. Smith, Chaldsean Account of Genesis, p. 281 [Rev. Ed., p. 
298. Tr.]. The text in the Transactions of the Society of Bibl. 
Archaeology, vol. IV., p. 282 ; cf. Fr. Lenormant, Die Mugie und 
Wohrsagekunst der Ghaldseer, p. 509 et seq. 

(3) Cuneif. Inscr. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 49, 2, rev. ; G. 
Smith, Chaldsean Account of Genesis, p. 229 et seq. [Rev. Ed., p. 
239 et seq. Tb.] 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 371 

the gods Ami and Bel assured a renown of terror."^) 
And she adds : " There dwell the master and the 
servant, there dwell the princes and the nobles, there 
dwell the monsters of the abyss of the great gods, 
there dwelleth Etana, there dwelleth Ner."( 2 ) In 
chapters x. and xiv. we shall have occasion to recur 
to the legends connected with the names of these two 
heroes, who are invested with a really Titanic char- 
acter, and the first of whom was called Titan by 
Berossus.( 3 ) For the present, it suffices for my pur- 
pose to have pointed out the destiny supposed to be 
theirs after death, and the analogy of this fate with 
that which the Greeks assigned to the Titans and 
the Aloades. 

But the analogy is even more striking with those 
proud heroes of Chaldsean tradition, the remembrance 
of whom is associated with a sentiment of gloomy 
terror, as well as with the antediluvian nephUlm and 
gibborim of the sixth chapter of Genesis, in the 
description given us by Hesiod( 4 ) of the violence of 
the formidable generations of the bronze age, whose 
deities were Cronos and the Titans ;( 5 ) generations 

(!) Namt age la ultu yume pana ibelu matuv — Anuv u Beluv 
istakkanu sume siri [1. 46, 47. Tr.]. 

( 2 ) Asbu enu u lagaru — asbu isibbu u mahhu — asbu UH.ME apsi 
sa Hani rabuti — asib Etana asib Ner [1. 50-53. Tr.]. 

( 3 ) Fragments 17, 18 and 19 of my edition. 
(*) Op. etdies, v. 143-174. 

(5) Gerhard, Griech. Mythol., \\ 127 and 128. Fre'ret {Mem. de 
V Acad, de Inscrip., vol. XLVIL, p. 41 et seq.) showed as early as 
the last century that the worship of Cronos represents the most 
ancient form of religion in the Greek countries, so ancient, indeed, 
that only a few traces of it remained in Hellenic times. 



\J 



372 The Beginnings of History. 

which were buried in Tartarus, and which, at the 
beginning of the iron age, were replaced by more 
righteous and better heroes, whose destiny on the 
other side of the grave was altogether different. It 
is impossible not to perceive that here we have 
another expression of the same tradition. And the 
fact should be taken into consideration that although 
with Hesiod it ends otherwise, the most general 
opinion among the Greeks made the destruction of 
the violent and demoralized humanity of the bronze 
age take place during Deucalion's deluge.^) 

" Father Zeus, says the poet, made a third race of 
men, endowed with speech, the bronze race, who were 
not equal to that of silver, but issued from the 
trunks of ash-trees, terrible and strong. They had 
no other occupation besides the dolorous labors of 
Ares, and arrogance ; they did not feed upon wheat, 
but, inaccessible, their souls were as hard as steel. 
Their strength was great, and invincible hands were 
joined to their shoulders by vigorous arms. Their 
weapons were of bronze, their houses of bronze, 
their implements of labor of bronze, for black 
iron was not yet known. After having slain each 
other with their own hands, they descended name- 
less into the loathsome abode of Hades, which 
freezes with horror ; however terrible they may have 
been in life, black death seized them and forced 
them to quit the brilliant light of the sun. 

"Then, after the earth had swallowed up that 
race, Zeus, son of Cronos, made a fourth race upon 

(!) Apollodor., i., 7, 2. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 373 

the nutritive earth, a juster and better race, the 
divine race of heroes, who are called demigods, in its 
first generation upon the vast earth. They likewise 
perished in the terrible combats of horrid war, some 
below seven-gated Thebes, in the land of Cadmos, 
fighting for the flocks of Edipus, and others, borne 
on ships beyond the wide sea, for the sake of Helen 
with the beautiful tresses. And there the final des- 
tiny of death overtook them ; and then Zeus, son of 
Cronos, assigned them the fate of a life separate from 
men, at the extremities of the earth, far from the 
immortals. Cronos reigns over them, and, freed 
from all care, they inhabit the Isles of the Blessed in 
the Ocean of the tremendous whirlwinds, fortunate 
heroes, for whom a fruitful soil brings forth honeyed 
fruits thrice in the year." 

A last question in the narrative with which the 
sixth chapter of Genesis, whose study has already 
so long detained us, opens, remains for us to touch 
upon, and it treats of the meaning which should 
be attributed to the words of Yahveh in the third 
verse : " My spirit shall not always prevail in man, 
because he is flesh, and his days shall be one hun- 
dred and twenty years." This is a first punishment, 
with which God smites the corruption and impiety of 
man, before resolving upon the extermination of the 
Deluge, which further progress in evil will, a little 
later, render necessary. He shortens the duration of 
human life, and causes it to shrink within limits 
which henceforth will become the normal ones. 

Grammatically, this is the only possible significa- 
tion of the text, and if the verse be examined by 



VJ 



374 The Beginnings of History. 

itself, independently of all prepossession, the mean- 
ing impresses one forcibly. "The days of" any 
one, is an expression frequently used in the Bible to 
signify the length of his life,^) and the preceding 
chapter of Genesis furnishes us with a series of 
examples which are absolutely convincing.( 2 ) More- 
over, we should place our vehdyu ydmdyu medh 
v'esrim shdndh of Genesis vi. 3 side by side with 
Psalm cix. 8 ihyti ydmdyu me'attim, which undoubt- 
edly means " may his life be short ! " This is the 
way in which the Septuagint, Josephus( 3 ) and St. 
Jerome understand the expression.( 4 ) 

But this curtailment of man's life to a duration of 
one hundred and twenty years, as proclaimed by 
Yahveh before the Deluge, flagrantly contradicts the 
continued existence of centuries attributed to Shem 
and his seven immediate descendants in the genealogy 
of Genesis xi. 10-25. It is in order to avoid this 
difficulty that an interpretation has been suggested, 
according to which the words of God would indicate 
a respite of one hundred and twenty years, accorded 

( J ) Genes, xi. 32; xxxv. 28; xlvii. 28; 1 Kings ii. 1.; Psalm 
cxix. 84 ; ciii. 15 ; civ. 4 ; Is. lxv. 20 ; Job xiv. 5. 

(2) Genes, v., 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 27, 31. 

(3) Antiq. Jud., I., 3, 2. 

( 4 ) For the complete justification of this meaning, see among 
modern exegetes : Ewald, Jahrb. d. bibl. Wissensch., vol. VII., p. 
23 ; Geschichte des Volkes Israel, 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 367 [3d Ed., I., 
p. 394; Eng. Trans., I., p. 275. Tk.] ; Tuch, Kommentar iiber die 
Genesis, p. 157 [2d Ed., by Arnold and Merx, p. 123. Tr.] ; Kno- 
bel, Die Genesis, 2d Ed., p. 82 et seq. [3d Ed., by Dillmann, p. 
134. Tr.] ; Baumgarten, Pentateuch, vol. I., p. 102; Schrader, 
Studien zur Kritik und Erklseriing der biblischen Urgeschichte, pp. 
91-95. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 375 

to mankind in order that they might repent and 
change their ways ; after which respite, should im- 
piety still be persisted in, the Deluge would follow. 
This interpretation appears for the first time in the 
Targum of Onqelos; St. Augustine ( x j has adopted it, 
and on his authority it has been widely accepted. 
Araonoj modern exegetes of various schools, it has 
been defended by Hengstenberg,( 2 ) Kurtz,( 3 ) Franz 
Delitzsch,( 4 ) Von Hofmann,^) and Keil.( 6 ) All this 
to the contrary notwithstanding, the form of the 
text will not allow of it. Ewald, as early as 1828,( 7 ) 
very justly remarked that if such were his thought 
the sacred writer adopted the very means not to 
be understood. To justify this explanation, it 
would be absolutely necessary that chapter vi., 
verse 5, should begin with vayehi miqqig medh 
v'esrlm shdndh, " and it happened after the space of 
one hundred and twenty years," conformably to what 
appears in chapter viii. 3, after the statement of vii. 
24, and in viii. 6, after the statement of vii. 17. 
Moreover, one could not, without ignoring the fun- 

( x ) Be civ. Bei, xv., 24 

( 2 ) In his articles in the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, 1858, 
entitled Die So&hne Oottes und die Toechter der Menschen. 

( 3 ) Geschichte des Alien Bundes, 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 80. [Eng. 
Trans., 1859, pp. 95, 101. Tr.] 

( 4 ) Commentar uber die Genesis, 3d Ed., p. 238 [4th Ed., p. 196. 
Tr.]. 

( 5 ) Schriftbeweis, 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 504 ; Weissagung und Erf ill- 
lung, vol. I., p. 86. 

( 6 ) Genesis und Exodus, p. 87 [2d Ed., 1866, p. 93 ; Eng. Trans., 
1864, p. 136. Tr.] 

( 7 ) Die Komposition der Genesis kritisch untersucht, p. 204. 



\J 



376 The Beginnings of History. . 

damental idea in the constructiou and sequence of 
antediluvian history in the system of the writers of 
Genesis, place the union of the "sons of God" with 
the "daughters of men" only one hundred and 
twenty years before the Deluge, as the point of de- 
parture of the great corruption of mankind, after the 
birth of Shem, when Noah was already 480 years 
old ; for, according to the text itself, it is only then 
that " the spirit of God ceases to prevail in man, be- 
cause he is nothing more than flesh." Much closer 
to the general conception of the development of 
the events of this period is the old tradition of 
Jewish origin, which places the event in the time of 
Yered,(*) whose name, signifying "descent," would 
thus be connected with the descent of the angels, who 
had fallen in love with the women, upon the earth, 
or else with the irremediable and universal fall of 
mankind. In fact, this beginning of the definite 
corruption of the antediluvian generations must ne- 
cessarily be placed before Hanok, whose sanctity 
contrasts with the evil that surrounds him, and 
whom the Eternal takes away from a world un- 
worthy of him. Consequently, as the inspired book 
represents it, the patience of Yahveh was far more 
long-suffering with the sons of men than is allowed 
by the interpretation to which we object; His mercy 
accorded to the possibility of their repentance a much 
greater respite than one hundred and twenty years, a 
period far too short, as measured by the length of 
life assigned to the antediluvians. 

( x ) Abou-1-Faradj, Histor. dynast,, p. 8, ed. Pococke. 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 377 

Thus we see no possibility of escaping the plain 
contradiction which exists between Genesis vi. 3 and 
xi. 10-25. It must be accepted just as presented 
in the text. But it is not actually embarrassing, 
except for such as still endeavor to defend the 
theory known as the Unity of Genesis. For all who, 
yielding to evidence, accept, without feeling therefore 
obliged to agree with the exaggerated consequences 
deduced therefrom by rationalism, the distinction of 
the two fundamental documents, the Elohist and the 
Jehovist, which have been used as sources by the final 
editor, who has done little beyond establishing a con- 
cordance between them, while leaving their redaction 
intact; — for all who accept this certain result, as I con- 
ceive it, of a century of critical study, the difficulty 
no longer exists. Genesis vi. 1-4 does not emanate 
from the same author as the Tholedoth Shem of the 
eleventh chapter, 10-25. The first fragment apper- 
tains to the Jehovist redaction and the second to the 
Elohist. Nor is this the only place where there 
exists a divergence between the two books which 
were cast into one in the composition of Genesis; 
other more considerable and important instances 
might be adduced, such as the comparison of the 
two narratives of the Creation in chapters first and 
second will show. And it is precisely the way in 
which the final redactor or compiler has refrained, 
beyond a certain point, from harmonizing and doing 
away with the discrepancies of the two narratives 
which he has thrown together, that proves the sacred 
and inspired character recognized by him in their re- 
daction. It is easy enough to point out divergences of 



378 The Beginnings of History. 

the same kind in the different versions of the same 
occurrence, as related in two books of the Bible like 
Kings and Chronicles. And it should be carefully 
noted that they bear only upon events of an historic 
nature and not upon things essential to faith, or 
those which concern revelation. Some discordances 
of fact in regard to certain events in the life of 
Christ even may be proved in the different Evan- 
gelists. St. Augustine ( x ) and St. John Chrysos- 
tom( 2 ) do not hesitate to acknowledge them, while 
estimating them at their true value, and it has been 
justly remarked that this very discrepancy in the 
sources, which there has been no attempt to efface, 
is one of the strongest proofs of the good faith 
and historic credibility of the Church. ( 3 ) The 
Christian's conscience need not, therefore, trouble 
him, when he accepts this fact, as we do here. 

With Ewald,( 4 ) Tuch,( 5 ) Knobel,( 6 ) Delitzsch,( 7 ) 
Vaihinger,( 8 ) and Aug. Kayser,( 9 ) I unhesitatingly 

(!) De Evangel, consensu, 12. 

( 2 ) In llatth., Proozm., Homil. i., p. 6, ed. Gaume. 

( 3 ) Ch. Lenormant, De la divinite du chrtstianisme dans ses rap- 
ports avec V liistoire, pp. 216-221. 

(±) Jahrb. dcr bibl. Wissenschaft, vol. VII., p. 18. 

( 5 ) Kommentar iiber die Genesis, p. lxv., and p. 140 et seq. [2d 
Ed., by Arnold and Merx, p. li., and p. 110 et seq. Tr.] 

( 6 ) Die Genesis, 2d Ed., p. 81 [3d Ed., by Dillmann, p. 128 et 
seq. Tr.]. 

Q) Kommentar uber die Genesis, 3d Ed., p. 642 [cf. 4th Ed., p. 
591. Tr.]. 

( 8 ) In Herzog's Real- Encyclopedic, vol. XL, pp. 335 and 337 [1st 
Ed., art. Pentateuch. Tr.]. 

( 9 ) Das vorezilische Buck der JJrgeschichte Israels und seine Erwei- 
terungen, p. 7. 



Children of God and Daughters of. Men. 379 

assign Gen. vi. 1-4 to the great Jehovist document, 
and I cannot in any wise agree with the opinion of 
Schrader^ 1 ) who prefers to regard it as an addition of 
the final editor, drawn from a source other than that 
of the two fundamental writings. His reason, that 
the antediluvian genealogies of the Jehovist writer 
do not give the figures of the duration of the lives, 
seems to me far from satisfactory, for the expression 
of the fact of the reduction of man's existence to 
120 years by way of chastisement for his corruption 
would suffice to imply that this existence was pre- 
viously longer, and did not necessarily call for a prior 
statement of this primitive duration. It is not the 
use of the name of Yahveh alone, but also the 
general style of the redaction, the forms of the lan- 
guage used therein in preference, and the anthro- 
popathic tendency in the way of representing the 
intervention of God in the history, which compels 
us to acknowledge in the first four verses of the 
sixth chapter of Genesis the hand of the Jehovist 
writer, whom Ewald, in his peculiar system, which 
has found no adherents, calls " the fourth narrator/' 
Furthermore, we may say that the Elohist writer 
makes all the patriarchs, except Yoseph, live be- 
yond the 120 years which the Jehovist in Gen- 
esis vi. 3 assigns as the final term of the duration 
of human life : Abraham 175 years, ( 2 ) Yicehaq 
180,( 3 ) Ya'aqob 147,( 4 ) Yoseph 110,( 5 ) Levi 137,( 6 ) 

( x ) Studien zur Kritik und Erklserung der biblischen Urgeschichte, 
pp. 96-99, 135 et seq. 

( 2 ) Gen. xxv. 7. ( 3 ) Gen. xxxv. 28. ( 4 ) Gen. xlvii. 28. 

( 5 ) Gen. 1. 26. ( 6 ) Exod. vi. 16. 



380 The Beginnings of History. 

Qehath, his son, loS^ 1 ) 'Amram, father of Mosheh, 
137,( 2 ) a series in which a descending progression 
may be observed, which comes down to the 123 
years of Aharon, ( 3 ) to the 120 of Mosheh, ( 4 ) and to 
the 110 of Yeh6shu'a.( 5 ) On the other hand, this 
life of 120 years, as given by the Jehovist, is the 
length attributed by Herodotus( 6 ) to the Ethiopian 
Macrobii. Above all does it accord in a manner 
altogether worthy of attention with the figure 
which the speculations of Chaklsean astrology had 
adopted for the maximum duration of human life. 
Epigenes estimated it at 112 years, Berossus at 
116 to 117 years, others again at 120,( 7 ) while the 
Egyptian astrologers assumed that in their country 
one could not live, at the utmost, more than 100 
years„( 8 ) As Ewald has remarked before us,( 9 ) the 
figure of 120 years, given in Gen. vi. 3, represents 
very evidently the most ancient form of Chaldaic 
computation, for it is the sum of two sosses. It is 
the primitive result, founded solely upon the nu- 
merical cycles which date back to the highest an- 
tiquity among the people of Shumer and Akkad, 
probably even before their establishment on the 
banks of the Euphrates and Tigris, since these same 

(!) Exod. vi. 18. ( 2 ) Exod. vi. 20. ( 3 ) Num. xxxiii. 39. 
( 4 ) Deuteron. xxxiv. 7. ( 5 ) Jos. xxiv. 29 ; Judges ii. 8. 

( 6 ) III., 23. 

( 7 ) Plin., Hist. Nat., VII., 50; Censorin., Be die not., 17, 4. 

( 8 ) Censorin., 17, 14. — But the rules attributed to Petosiris and 
Nechepsos allowed a possible length of 124 years to life in the 
climate of Italy. 

t 9 ) Geschichte des Voiles Israel, 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 367 [3d Ed., 
I., p. 394; Eng. Trans., I., p. 275. Tr.] 



Children of God and Daughters of Men. 381 

cycles are found again among the peoples of Northern 
Asia, the Uigurs, the Mongols, the Mandchus, and 
the Chinese, as well as in India. (^ The 116 years 
of Berossus and the 112 of Epigenes are, on the other 
hand, a later curtailment, due to astrological subtle- 
ties, which make their appearance at quite a late 
epoch. 

Thus we find ourselves once more led back to 
Babylon and to Chaldsea, the cradle of the Terajiites, 
as the birthplace of the form which clothes the primi- 
tive traditions of mankind in the narratives of the 
earliest chapters of Genesis. 

(!) See Fr. Lenormant, La langue primitive de la Chaldee, p. 153 
et seq. 



CHAPTEE VIII. 

THE DELUGE. 

Among all the traditions which concern the history 
of primitive humanity, the most universal is that of 
the Deluge. It would be going too far to assert that 
this tradition is found among all nations, but it does 
reappear among all the great races of men, saving 
only in one instance — an exception which it is im- 
portant to note— and that is the black race, traces 
of it having been vainly sought either among the 
African tribes or the dusky populations of Oceanica. 
This absolute silence of an entire race in reference to 
an event of such prime significance, amid the agree- 
ment of all other races on the same point, is a fact 
which should be carefully considered by science, for 
from it may proceed important consequences.f 1 ) 

We are about to pass in review the principal tra- 
\j ditions of the Delude, as found scattered anions the 
various branches of the human race. Their agree- 
ment with the Biblical account will bring out into 
strong relief the original unity of these traditions ; 
thus we shall come to recognize this as belonging to 
those which date back to the age before the dispersion 
of mankind, in the very dawn of civilization, so that 

(*) See Schoebel, De V UniversaUte du Deluge, Paris, 1858. 

382 



The Deluge. 383 

it could have originated only with a real and well- 
defined event. 

In the first place, however, we shall be obliged to 
sweep away certain legendary records which have 
been erroneously associated with the Biblical Deluge, 
but whose essential features are incapable of such 
assimilation by the laws of true criticism. These 
stories refer to local phenomena, and their historic 
date belongs to a time comparatively near our own. 
Doubtless the tradition of the great primitive cata- 
clysm may have been mixed up with them and their 
importance exaggerated; but the characteristic points 
of the narrative set forth in Genesis do not reappear 
in them, the event recorded distinctly preserving its 
restricted and special physiognomy, even under the 
legendary form with which it has been invested. 
To be guilty of the mistake of classifying tales of 
this nature with those that refer to the Deluge would 
tend to weaken the value of the consequences which 
we are justified in deducing from the agreement of 
these last, instead of strengthening them. 

Such is the character of the great inundation re- 
ferred in the historical books of China to the reign 
of Yao.( x ) It has no real affinity with, nor even any 
resemblance to, the Biblical Deluge ;( 2 ) it is a purely 

( 1 ) Klaproth, Asia poly glotta, p. 32 et seq. ; Gutzlaff, Geschichte 
dcs chinesischen Reiches, herausgegeben von Neumann, p. 26 et seq. 

( 2 ) Bunsen, JEjyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte [vol. V., 4te 
Abtheilung., p. 299. Tr.], vol. III., p. 406 [Eng. Trans. Tr.]. 
— ' ' I do not affirm that there may not be some exaggeration 
in certain expressions of the Shu-Icing, in respect to the great 
inundation which occurred in China during the reign of the Empe- 
ror Yao," saysPauthier {Journal Aslatique, sixth series, vol. XI., p. 



\J 



384 The Beginnings of History. 

local event, the date of which may be fixed, limited 
by the yet uncertain status of our knowledge of Chi- 
nese chronology, by going back beyond the eighth 
century B. C.,( J ) long after the beginnings of the 
undoubted historic ages in Egypt and in Baby- 
lonia.^) Chinese writers introduce us, in this con- 
nection, to Yi, a minister and engineer, who turns 
the waters back into their proper channels, raises 
dikes, digs canals, and regulates the taxes of every 
province throughout China. ( 3 ) A Chinese scholar, 
Edouard Biot, has proved, in a memoir on the 

313 [1868. Tr.]), "but in the narrative, taken as a whole, it can- 
not possibly be supposed that its author wished to inculcate a 
belief in an ' universal deluge,' since there is no mention what- 
ever in it of the death of a human being in consequence of the 
inundation ; all that he says is that ' the populations of the plains 
lamented, sighing.' " 

( l ) See on this subject the well-considered remarks of Legge 
(The Chinese Classics, vol. III., proleg., p. 89 et seq.), who, how- 
ever, while clearly showing the uncertainty of the traditional Chi- 
nese figures, attributes to those of the Bible an historical value 
which can no longer be critically accorded to them. 

C 1 ) According to the chronological system of the Lih-tai-M-sse 
(Nouveau Journal Asiatique, June, 1830, p. 419 ; Journal Asiatique, 
sixth series, vol. XI., p. 332), the labors of Yi in repairing the dis- 
asters of the inundation must have come to an end 2278 B. C, 
.and according to the "Annals of the Bamboos" or Tchu-shu (the 
Chinese text of this book, with a translation, is published in the 
introduction to the third volume of Legge' s Chinese Classics, pp. 
108-176), in 2062 B. C. 

( 3 ) See chiefly chapters Yao-tien, Yih-tsi, and Yi-hung of the 
Rhu-king, either in P. Gaubil's translation, or in Pauthier's Livres 
JSacres de V Orient, or in Legge's Chinese Classics [vol. III. Tr.]. 
— Other texts may be found in the Journal Asiatique, sixth series, 
vol. XI., pp. 331-335. 



The Deluge. 385 

changes in the lower course of the Hoang-ho,^) that 
the catastrophe referred to was due to the frequent 
inundations of this river; the primitive Chinese 
society, settled upon the banks of the river, suffering 
greatly from those overflowings. The labors of Yl 
were simply the beginnings of the embankments 
necessary to confine the waters, and these were kept 
up during the following ages.( 2 ) A famous inscrip- 
tion cut into the rock on one of the peaks of the 
mountains of Hu-nan,( 3 ) may have been a contem- 
poraneous memorial of these labors, and consequently 
the most ancient specimen of Chinese epigraphy; this 
inscription apparently contains strong intrinsic proofs 
of authenticity/ 4 ) sufficient to dissipate the doubts 
raised in regard to it by Legge,( 5 ) except for the 
somewhat suspicious circumstance that it is known 
to us only through ancient copies, and that in spite 

( 1 ) Journal Asiatique for the year 1843. 

( 2 ) Legge {Chinese Classics, vol. III., proleg., p. 56 et seq.) has 
clearly proved that especially in chapter Yi-kung of the Sha- 
king, certain acts have been attributed to Yi which really belong- 
to a much later epoch, the chapter in question being undoubtedly 
a romance of subsequent date, which gives this famous name the 
credit of all the undertakings for regulating the waters of the 
Hoang-ho through a long succession of generations. 

( 3 ) Hager, Monument de Yu, ou la plus ancienne inscription de la 
Chine, Paris, 1802; Klaproth, Inschrift des Yu, ilbersetzt und 
erkldrt, Berlin, 1811. 

( 4 ) See Pauthier's Deuxieme Memoir e sur V antiquiU de Vhistoire 
et de la civilisation chinoises, (Fapres les ecrivains et les monuments 
indigenes, in the eleventh volume of the sixth series of the Journal 
Asiatique. 

( 5 ) In the Introduction to vol. III. of his Chinese Classics, p. 
67, et seq. 

25 



VJ 



386 The Beginnings of History. 

of the most diligent search for several centuries past 
it cannot be discovered.^) 

The character of a local event is quite as evident in 
the legend of Botchica, as preserved by the Muyscas, 
the ancient inhabitants of the province of Cundina- 
marca, in South America, though in this instance 
there is a much larger intermixture of fable with the 
fundamental historic element. ( 2 ) This, in fact, is 
the story : The wife of a divine man, or rather of a 
god, named Botchica,( 3 ) her own name being Huy- 
thaca, works abominable spells in order to force the 
River Funzha to leave its bed ; the whole plain of 
Bogota is overwhelmed by the waters ; men and ani- 
mals perish in this catastrophe, a few only escaping 
destruction by seeking refuge on the loftiest moun- 
tains. The tradition adds that Botchica shattered 
the rocks which shut in the valleys of Canoas and 
Tequendama, to allow ingress to the waters; after- 
wards he gathered together the scattered remnants of 
the Muyscas nation, taught them the worship of 
the Sun, and ascended into heaven, after living five 
hundred years in Cundinamarca. 

(!) See the texts quoted by Legge, as above, pp. 67-70, and 
Wang Tchang's article Kin-shih-tsui-picn, translated by Pauthier, 
Journal Asiatique, 6th series, vol. XI., pp. 826-330. 

( 2 ) Humboldt, Vues des Cordillieres et monuments des peuples in- 
digenes de V Amerique , vol. I., pp. 88, 87, and 316; vol. II., p. 
14, et seq. [ed. 1810, pp. 32, 207, 226 and pi. xxvi., xxxii.; Eng. 
Trans., 1814, I., 96; II., 23, 63. Tr.] 

( 3 ) On the mythology and religious system of Cundinamarca, 
see the remarks in J. G. M tiller's fine work, Gescluchte der Ameri- 
kanischen XJrreligionen ; and also Girard de Rialle, La mythologie 
comparee, vol. I., chap. xvii. 



The Deluge. 387 

Of all the traditions relating to the great cata- 
clysm, by far the most curious is that of the Chal- 
deans. It has, without doubt, left the mark of its 
influence upon the tradition of India, and it more 
exactly resembles the account of Genesis than any 
other narrative of the Deluge. It is most evident to 
whomsoever may compare the two accounts, that they 
must have been one and the same, until the epoch 
when the Terahites left Ur for Palestine. 

We possess two versions of the Chaldean account 
of the Deluge, which, though differing as to detail, 
are very nearly agreed. The earliest known, as well 
as the shortest, is that which Berossus copied from 
the sacred books of Babylon into the history written 
by him, according to the manner of the Greeks. 
After having referred to the first nine antediluvian 
kings, the Chaldean priest thus proceeds : 

"Obartes (Ubaratutu) being dead, his son, Xisu- 
thros (Hasisatra), reigned eighteen sars (64,800 years). 
It was in his time that the great Deluge came to 
pass, the history of which is related in the following 
manner in the sacred documents : Cronos (Ea) ap- 
peared to him in his sleep and announced to him 
that on the 15th of the month of Daisios (the Assy- 
rian month Si van, a little before the summer sol- 
stice), all mankind would perish by a deluge. He 
then commanded him to take the beginning, the 
middle and the end of all that had been consigned to 
writing, and to bury it in the city of the Sun, Sip- 
para ; after that, to build a ship, and go on board of 
it with his family and dearest friends ; to place in 
the vessel provisions for food and drink, and to intro- 



\J 



388 The Beginnings of History. 

duce into it animals, both fowls and quadrupeds; 
lastly, to get everything ready for navigation. And 
when Xisuthros asked in which direction he should 
steer his vessel, he was told ' toward the gods/ and 
to pray that good should come of it to men. 

" Xisuthros obeyed, and built a ship five stadia 
long and two broad ; he gathered in all that had been 
commanded him, and took on board his wife, his 
children and his intimate friends. 

" The deluge having come upon them, and soon 
subsiding, Xisuthros loosed some of the birds, who, 
having found neither food nor place of rest, returned 
to the vessel. Some days later, Xisuthros again gave 
them their liberty, but they returned once more to 
the ship, their feet soiled with mud. At last, being 
loosed for a third time, the birds returned no more. 
Then Xisuthros understood that the earth was bare ; 
he made an opening in the roof of the ship and found 
that it had gone aground upon a mountain. Then he 
came down with his wife, his daughter and his pilot, 
worshiped the Earth, raised an altar and sacrificed 
thereon to the gods ; at this moment he disappeared 
with those who bore him company. 

" Nevertheless, those who remained in the ship, 
not seeing Xisuthros return, also descended to the 
ground and began to look for him, calling him by 
name. They never saw Xisuthros again, but a voice 
from heaven made itself heard, bidding them be pious 
toward the gods ; that he had received the reward 
of his piety in being taken up to dwell henceforth 
among the gods, and his wife, his daughter and the 
pilot of the vessel shared this great honor. The 



The Deluge. 389 

voice said, moreover, to those who were left, that they 
should return to Babylonia, and agreeably to the 
decrees of fate dig up the writings buried at Sip- 
para, in order to transmit them to men. It added 
that the country where they then were was Armenia. 
After hearing the voice they sacrificed to the gods, 
and returned on foot to Babylonia. A portion of 
XisuthiW ship, which finally went a aground in 
Armenia, is still found in the Gordyeean Mountains 
in Armenia, and pilgrims bring away asphaltum 
which they have scraped from the fragments ; they 
use it against witchcraft. As to the companions of 
Xisuthros, they arrived in Babylonia, dug up the 
writings buried at Sippara, founded a number of 
cities, built temples, and restored Babylon.'^ 1 ) 

This extract is taken from the book of Berossus, 
by Cornelius Alexander, called Polyhistor. The 
extract made by Abydenus is shorter, but enters more 
into detail in the passage about the sending forth of 
the birds. 

"After Eveddreschos there were several kings, and 
lastly Sisithros, to whom Cronos announced that on 
the 15th of the month Daisios there would be a great 
abundance of rain. The ■ god then commanded him 
to hide all the writings in the city of the Sun, 
Sippara. Sisithros, having fulfilled these commands, 
speedily set sail toward Armenia, for the prediction 
of the god was immediately realized. The third day 
after the rain had ceased, he loosed several birds, 
to see if they could discover any land already bare of 

( J ) Fragm. 15 of my edition. 



\J 



390 The Beginnings of History. 

the waters. But these birds, finding nothing any- 
where but the sea, ready to swallow them up, and not 
being able to rest anywhere, returned to Sisithros; 
he sent out others. Having at last succeeded in 
his design at the third attempt, for the birds 
returned, their feet covered with slime, the gods 
carried him away from the sight of men. And out 
of the wood of his ship, which had stopped in 
Armenia, the inhabitants of the country made amu- 
lets, which they hung around their necks, against 
evil charms."^) 

Side by side with this version, which, interesting 
as it may be, is after all only at second hand, we are 
now enabled to place an original Chaldseo-Babylonian 
redaction, which the lamented George Smith was the 
first to decipher from the cuneiform tablets exhumed 
at Nineveh, and transported to the British Museum. 
The account of the Deluge in this is inserted as an 
episode in the eleventh tablet, or eleventh canto of 
the great Epic of Uruk, of which we gave a brief 
summary in our sixth chapter. As we then said, the 
hero of this epopee, called provisionally Izdhubar or 
Gisdhubar, since we do not know how to read his 
name, attacked by a sickness, a kind of leprosy, goes 
off to consult, in regard to his healing, the patriarch 
saved from the Deluge, Hasisatra, in the far-away 
country whither the gods have transported him, that 
he might there enjoy eternal felicity. He asks Ha- 
sisatra to unfold to him the secret of the circum- 
stances which had gained for him this privilege of 



(*) Fragm. 16 of my edition. 



The Deluge. 391 

immortality, and it is on this wise that the patriarch 
is led to tell him about the cataclysm. 

This narrative may be almost entirely restored by 
comparing the fragments of the three copies of the 
poem, which belonged to the library of the palace of 
Nineveh.^) These three copies were made in the 
seventh century before our era, by the order of the 
King of Assyria, Asshur-bani-abal, from a very old 
copy, in possession of the Sacerdotal Library of the 
city of Uruk, founded by the mouarchs of the first 
Chaldsean empire. It is difficult to settle precisely 
the date of the original thus transcribed by the Assy- 
rian copyists ; but it is certain that it goes back to 

( x ) The complete text may be found in the Cuneiform Inscr. of 
West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 50 and 51. — For the principal transla- 
tions so far made, see Gr. Smith, Chaldsean Account of the Deluge, 
London, 1872 ; The Eleventh Tablet of the Izdhubar Legends, in 
vol. III. of Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology , pp. 
530-596 ; Assyrian Discoveries, pp. 184-198 ; Chaldsean Account 
of Genesis, pp. 264-272, 285-290 [Rev. Ed., p. 279 et seq., 300 
et seq. Tb.] (pp. 222-239 of the German translation of 
Friedrich Delitzsch, with his observations at pp. 318-321). 
See, besides, Fr. Lenormant, Le Deluge et V epopee babyloni- 
enne, in the second volume of Premieres civilisations, pp. 3-146 ; 
Menant, Babylone et la Chaldee, pp. 21-32; Abbe Vigouroux, La 
Bible et les decouvertes rnodem.es, 2d Ed., vol. I., pp. 184-212. The 
translation given by Oppert in his Assyriological course at the 
College of France has been published in E. Ledrain's Histoire 
d' Israel, vol. I., pp. 422-434, and has been the means of great 
progress in the understanding of certain portions of the text, 
though the explanation does not seem to me equally satisfactory 
throughout. The translation which we publish here contains a 
large proportion of personal work of our own, grafted upon the 
labors of those who were our pioneers in the study of this text. 
The philological justification for it may be found in appendix VI., 
at the end of this volume. 



\J 



392 The Beginnings of History. 

the epoch of that ancient empire at least seventeen 
centuries before our era, and possibly even farther, 
this being long before Moses, and almost contempo- 
rary with Abraham. The variations offered by the 
three existing copies prove that the original copy was 
traced by means of the primitive form of writing, 
designated as hieratic, these characters having already 
become unfamiliar in the seventh century, for the 
copyists differed in the interpretation of certain signs ; 
in some cases simply reproducing the forms of those 
which they no longer understood. Finally, it has 
been ascertained, by comparing these same variations, 
one with the other, that the copy transcribed by 
order of Asshur-bani-abal was itself a copy of a still 
older manuscript, in which some interlinear glosses 
had already been added to the original text. Some 
copyists introduced these into the text; others 
omitted them. 

Having made these preliminary remarks, I will 
proceed to give in its integrity the narrative put in 
the mouth of Hasisatra by the poem : 

" I desire to declare to thee, O Izdhubar, (?) the 
history of my preservation — and to tell thee the deci- 
sion of the gods. 

" The city of Shurippak, ( l ) a city known to thee, 

(!) Shurippak, out of which the copyists of Berossus, by a suc- 
cession of errors, made Aapa?x a > was a town of Lower Chaldsea, 
situated near the sea, for we find the "ships of Shurippak" 
spoken of {Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. II., pi. 46, 1. 1, e-d; 
corrected in Trans, of the Soc. of Bibl. Archeology, vol. III., p. 
589). The religious Accadian name of this city was ma-uru, "the 
city of the ship," doubtless in allusion to the legend of the 



The Deluge. 393 

is situated on the Euphrates ; — it was ancient, and in 

it the gods [were not honored]. [I alone was] 

their servant, to the great gods. — [The gods held 
a council called by] Anu. — [A deluge was proposed 
by] Bel — [and approved by Nabu, Nergal and] 
Adar.f 1 ) 

"And the god [Ea], the unchanging lord, — re- 
peated their command in a dream. — I listened to the 
decree of fate which he proclaimed, and he said to 
me : — i Man of Shurippak, son of Ubaratutu, — thou, 
'make a vessel and do it (quickly). — [By a deluge] 
1 1 will destroy seed and life. — Cause [then] to pass 
' into the vessel the seed of all that hath life. — The 
i vessel which thou shalt construct, — 600 cubits will 
' be the measure of its length — and 60 cubits the 
' extent of its breadth and its height. — [Launch it] 

' also upon the Ocean and cover it with a roof/ 

I understood, and I said to Ea, my lord : — ' [The 
' vessel] which thou commandest me to build thus, — 
' [when] I make it — young and old [will laugh at 
'me]. 7 [£a opened his mouth and] spake; — he 

building of Hasisatra's vessel. Malik is represented as the 
special divinity of Shurippak (Cuneif. Inscr. of West. Asia, vol. 
II., pi. 60, 1. 20, a-b). According to the supplement, furnished 
to the text previously published by the fragment recently brought 
to the British Museum, this city was built upon the Euphrates. 

In the Mussulman traditions the place of Noah's embarkation 
■was at Kufah, on the western arm of the Euphrates, or else at 
Babylon, or even 'Ainvardah in Mesopotamia (D'Herbelot/ Biblio- 
theque orientate, article Nouh). 

(!) I adopt here almost textually the approximate restorations 
of Oppert, the general meaning necessitated by the continuation 
of the narrative. 



394 The Beginnings of History. 

said to me, his servant : — ' [If they laugh at thee] 
' thou shalt say to them : [He will be punished] who 
' has injured me, — [for the protection of the gods] is 

'overme.Q — .... like caverns . . . ■ . . . . 

' I will exercise my judgment on that which is above 

' and that which is beneath .... .... Close 

' the vessel . . . .... At the time which I 

' shall make known to thee, — enter in and close to 
'thee the door of the ship. — In the interior, thy 
'grain, thy furniture, thy provisions, — thy wealth, 
' thy servants, male and female, and the young peo- 

< pi e> — the cattle of the fields and the wild animals 
' of the country, which I will gather together, and 
' which I will send to thee, shall be kept behind thy 
' door.' — Hasisatra opened his mouth and spake ; — 
he said to Ea, his lord: — 'No one has made (such 

< a) vessel. — On the keel I will fix ... . — I will 

'see ... . and the vessel ■ the vessel 

' which thou commandest me to make [thus,] — which 

'in . . . : 

( 2 ) 

" On the fifth day [its two sides ( 3 )] were raised — 

within its cover fourteen in all were its girders, 

vi fourteen in all it reckoned of them above. — I placed 

(!) Mohammed says in the Qoran (xi. 40 and 41), evidently 
after a popular Jewish tradition of his time : "He built a vessel, 
and every time the chiefs of his people passed by him they 
mocked him." "Do not mock me, said Noah; for I will mock 
you in my turn as you mock me, and you will learn upon whom 
will fall the punishment, which will cover him with opprobrium. 
This punishment will remain perpetually upon your head." 

( 2 ) Here a hiatus of several verses. 

( 3 ) Of the ship. 



The Deluge. 395 

its roof and I covered it. — I sailed in it on the 
sixth [day] ; I divided its stories on the seventh j — I 
divided the interior compartments on the eighth. — I 
stopped up the leaks by which water came in ; — 
I searched for the cracks, and I added all that was 
lacking. — I poured upon the outside three times 
3600 (measures) of bitumen, — and three times 3600 
(measures) of bitumen on the inside. Three times 
3600 men, who were porters, carried on their heads 
chests (of provisions). — I kept 3600 chests for the 
food of my family — and the sailors divided among 
themselves twice 3600 chests. — For [supplying food] 
I caused oxen to be killed ; — I established (distrib- 
uting of portions) for each day. In [providing for 
the need of] drink, some casks and some wine — [I 
gathered together in quantity] like the waters of a 
river and — [provisions] in quantity like the dust of 
the earth ; — [to arrange them in] the chests I put my 
hand. — .... of the sun .... the vessel was 
ready. — .... strong, and — I caused to be carried 
above and below the tackle of the ship. — -[This 
load] filled up the two-thirds of it. 

" All that I possessed, I gathered it together ; all 
that I possessed in silver, I gathered it together ; — all 
that I possessed in gold, I gathered it together ; — all 
that I possessed of the seeds of life of every nature, I 
gathered it together. — I caused all to come into the 
vessel ; my servants, male and female, — the cattle of 
the fields, the wild beasts of the country, and the sons 
of the people, I caused them all to come in. 

"Shamash (the Sun) reached the moment deter- 
mined upon — and he announced it in these terms : 



\J 



396 The Beginnings of History. 

' In the evening I will cause it to rain abundantly 
' from heaven ; — enter within the vessel, and shut thy 
1 door/ The moment fixed had come, — that he an- 
nounced in these terms : ' In the evening I will cause 
' it to rain abundantly from heaven.' When I came 
to the evening of this day, — of the day when I was 
to keep on my guard, I was afraid ; — I entered into 
the vessel, and I shut my door. — In closing up the 
vessel, to Buzur-shadi-rabi, the pilot, — I confided 
(this) abode with all which it contained. 

" Mu-sheri-ina-namari( L ) — rose up from the foun- 
dations of the sky in a black cloud ; — Ramman thun- 
dered in the midst of this cloud, — and Nabu and 
Sharru went before; — they went devastating the 
mountain and the plain ; — Xergal, the powerful, 
drew (after him) punishments; — Adar advanced, 
overwhelming as he went; — the archangels of the 
abyss (AnunnaM) brought destruction — in their ter- 
rors they shook the earth. — The inundation of Ram- 
man swelled up to heaven, — and (the earth) having 
lost its brightness, was changed into a desert. 

a They broke the .... of the earth's surface 
like . . . ; — [they destroyed] the living creatures 
from the surface of the earth. — The terrible [deluge] 
upon men swelled up to [heaven]. — The brother saw 
his brother no more ; men knew each other no longer. 
In heaven — the gods became afraid of the waterspout 
an( } — sought a refuge; they ascended even to the 
heaven of Anu.( 2 ) The gods were stretched motion- 

(^ "The Water of Twilight at the dawn of day," one of the 
personifications of the rain. 

( 2 ) The highest heaven of the fixed stars. 



The Deluge. 397 

less, pressed close against each other, like dogs. — 
Ishtar spoke like a little child, — the great goddess 
pronounced her discourse : — ■ ' Behold how mankind 
has returned to clay, and — -it is the misfortune 
which I announced in the presence of the gods. — So 
as I have announced the misfortune in presence of 
the gods, — for the evil I have announced the .... 
terrible of the men who belong to me. — I am the 
mother who brought forth men, and — like the race 
of fishes, behold, they fill the sea ; and — the gods, 
because of [what is done by] the archangels of the 
abyss are weeping with me/f) The gods on their 
chairs were seated in tears, — and they kept their lips 
closed, [meditating] upon future things. 

" Six days and as many nights — passed away ; the 
wind, the waterspout, and the deluge of rain were in 
all their strength. — At the approach of the seventh 
day, the deluge of rain decreased, the terrible water- 
spout — whose assault had been like an earthquake — 
was calmed. — The sea began to dry up, and the wind 
and the waterspout came to an end.— I looked at the 
sea, observing it attentively. — And all mankind had 
returned to clay;( 2 ) the corpses floated like seaweed. 
■ — I opened the window and the light came striking 
my countenance. — I was overcome with sadness; I 

(!) Other copies do not include this last verse in Ishtar' s dis- 
course, correcting it thus : " The gods, because (of what had been 
done by) the archangels of the abyss, were weeping with her." 

( 2 ) This verse, and that with which Ishtar' s discourse begins, 
a little above, offers a close resemblance to Genesis iii. 19. It is 
quite plain from this that the Chaldeeo-Babylonians held that man 
was formed of clay, as stated in Genesis ii. 7. 



\J 



398 The Beginnings of History. 

sat down and I wept ; — and my tears came upon my 
countenance. 

" I looked at the regions which bordered the sea ; 
— towards the twelve points of the horizon, not a 
continent. — The vessel was carried above the land of 
Nizir. — The mountain of Nizir stopped the vessel 
and did not permit it to pass over. — One day and 
a second day, the mountain of Nizir stopped the ves- 
sel, and did not permit it to pass over ; (*) — the 
third and the fourth day the mountain of Nizir 
stopped the vessel, and did not permit it to pass 
over ; — the fifth and the sixth day, the mountain of 
Nizir stopped the vessel, and did not permit it to 
pass over. — At the approach of the seventh day, — I 
caused to go forth and let loose a dove. The dove 
went, turned and — found no place where it could 
rest, and it came back. — I caused to go forth and I 
let loose a swallow. The swallow went, turned and 
— found no place where it could rest, and it came 
back. — I caused to go forth and I let loose a raven. — 
The raven went and saw the carrion on the waters ;( 2 ) 
— he ate, rested, turned and did not come back. 

(!) In this and the two following verses, after the words "the 
mountain of Nizir," the text has " idem," showing that the end 
is repeated as in the preceding verse. 

( 2 ) qarura sa mi imur ; qarura is from the root qararu, "to 
be motionless, frozen." As we read in Abydenus' extract from 
Berossus of the birds let loose by Sisithros, kadexouevov o(f>iag 
TreAaysog hfMpixaveoq, it would seem that the historian of Chaldsea 
had a manuscript under his eyes whereon this word was spelled 
garura (owing to a peculiarity in Babylonian documents), and 
that he referred it to the root gararu, whence gararu sa mi, " the 
impetuous course of the waters." In the same way ova evpovra 



The Deluge. 399 

" I then caused to go forth (that which was in the 
vessel) toward the four winds, and I offered a sacrifice. 
— I raised the pyre of the holocaust upon the peak 
of the mountain ; seven by seven I arranged the 
measured vases^ 1 ) — and below I laid reeds, cedar 
wood and juniper — the gods smelled the odor; the 
gods smelled a good odor ; — and the gods gathered 
like flies above the master of the sacrifice. ( 2 ) — Afar 
off, approaching, the Great Goddess — raised the 
great zones which Anu made for their glory (that of 
the gods).( 3 ) These gods, crystal-luminous before 
me, I will never forsake them ; — on this day I 
prayed that forever I should not forsake them: — 
' That the gods may come to my pyre of holocaust ! — 
but that Bel may never come to my pyre of holo- 
caust ! — for he has not mastered himself, and has 
made the waterspout (of the deluge), — and has 
counted my men for the abyss/ 

tSttov brrov Radical in Alexander Polyhistor, and cnropiovcai orij 
mdopfiicovTcii in Abydenus, are exact translations of the expres- 
sions manzazu ul ipassu in our original Chaldsean account. Alex- 
ander Polyhistor and Abydenus speak of three sendings of birds, 
as does the Epopee of Uruk ; but the circumstance of the last 
birds returning with their feet soiled with slime does not recur 
here. 

(!) Adagur ; this word, of Accadian origin, has a synonym, 
sutu, in Fr. Lenormant's Choix de textes Cuneiformes, No. 82, B, 
1. 13, 14 (p. 208). It means, therefore, vase of the measure, called 
in Hebrew sSah, out of which the Greeks have made cdrov. The 
reference here is to a detail of the ritual rules for sacrifices. 

( 2 ) bel niqi is the Assyrian phrase corresponding with ba'al 
hazilbah of the Punic sacerdotal tariff of Marseilles and Carthage, 
"the master of the sacrifice," meaning he who offers the sacrifice. 

( 3 ) These metaphorical expressions might very easily mean the 
rainbow. 



\J 



400 The Beginnings of History. 

" From afar, in approaching, Bel — saw the vessel, 
and Bel stopped ; he was filled with anger against 
the gods and the celestial archangels. — ' No one shall 
come out of it alive ! not a man shall be saved from 
the abyss ! ? — Adar opened his mouth and spake ; he 
said to the warrior Bel : — ' Who beside Ea could 
have made the resolve ? — for Ea possesses knowledge 
and (he foresees) all/ — Ea opened his mouth and 
spake ; he said to the warrior Bel : — ' O thou, herald 
of the gods, warrior, — as thou hast not mastered thy- 
self, thou hast made the waterspout (of the deluge). — 
Leave the sinner to carry the burden of his sin, the 
blasphemer the burden of his blasphemy. — Comply 
with this good pleasure, and it will never be in- 
fringed ; faith never [concerning it will be violated.] 
— Instead of making a (new) deluge, let the lions 
appear, and let them reduce the number of men; 
instead of making a (new) deluge, let the hyenas 
appear, and let them reduce the number of men ; — 
instead of making a (new) deluge, let there be famine, 
and let the earth be [devastated] ; — instead of making 
a (new) deluge, let Dibbarra (the god of epidemic 
diseases) appear, and let men be [mown down].( x ) — 

(i) For the Chaldfeo-Babylonians, as for the Hebrews, famines 
and epidemics were visitations of the divine anger, provoked by 
the sins of men. Long legends were related regarding certain of 
these scourges that had desolated the world in a peculiarly ter- 
rible way in the olden times ; but subsequently to the deluge, 
agreeably to the decree of Ik, accepted by Bel, which ordered 
that this punishment alone should henceforth be used instead of 
a cataclysm to lead mankind to repentance. Such is the beautiful 
account, translated by George Smith [Chaldsean Account of Genesis, 
chap, viii.), of the exploits of Dibbarra, a form of the god Adar 



The Deluge. 401 

(Cuneif. Inserip. of West. Asia, vol. II., pi. 54, 1. 67), who presides 
especially over pestilences. In fulfilling the mission which the 
superior gods had confided to him, Dibbarra traversed the earth, 
striking men with his scourge, like the angel in the Bible, de- 
scribed in 2 Sam. xxiv. 13-16, and in 2 Kings xix. 35. His com- 
panions and ministers are Ishu, the fire of fever personified, and 
''seven warrior gods." In the poem, the fragments of which 
have been discovered by G. Smith, and which included no less 
than five cantos or tablets, Anu and Ea are the gods who send 
Dibbarra to carry his scourge through the world, to take ven- 
geance on a state of corruption which had reached the highest 
pitch. In the fourth tablet, the only one in which we still find 
a certain degree of continuity in the text, we find Babylon de- 
populated by him because it had been guilty of an unjust and 
oppressive war, and likewise Larsa, the city of the Sun-god, and 
Uruk, where Anu and Ishtar reign, while he spares the city of 
Kalu, on the prayer of its protecting deity, owing to the right- 
eousness of its inhabitants ; finally reaching Kuti, which he de- 
vastates. There he stops, prophesies intestine wars which will 
decimate all the neighboring nations, will arm Assyrian against 
Assyrian, Elamite against Elamite, Cissian against Cissian, but 
througn which the people of Akkad will be preserved, and at 
length be able to repair in peace the disasters of the scourge to 
which they have been subjected, and extend their power afar. 
Finally, from Kuti, Dibbarra sends Ishu into Syria (Afyarru) to 
ravage that country in its turn. This account recalls the great 
mythological plagues of the Greeks, such as the one which de- 
stroyed the Ectenes of Bceotia (Pausan., ix., 5, 1) and that which 
Abaris healed (Suid. and Harpocrat., v., *A{3apic). 

In another fragment of the legend (G. Smith, Chaldsean 
Account of Genesis, pp. 154-156 [Rev. Ed., pp. 156-158. 
Tr.]), which belongs also to the- cycle of the mythical history 
of Babylonia, there is reference to a drought which Anu, 
Bel, and Ea call down to punish the sins of men, not allowing 
Ramman to cause rain to fall from heaven, so that a famine 
results. This account, at least in the fundamental idea which 
inspires it, manifests a strong analogy with the idea of the 
seventeenth and eighteenth chapters of the first book of Kings, 
where the impiety of Ahab is punished by a drought of several 
years' duration, the cessation of which is obtained by the inter- 

26 



\J 



402 The Beginnings of History. 

cession of the prophet Eliyah, as a miracle, proving the power 
of Yahveh against the worshipers of Ba'al. In the Chaldgeo- 
Babylonian legend it appears that the prayers of the righteous 
Atarpi gained favor for mankind from the gods, and brought 
down the rain once more. Eacus plays the same part in the 
traditions of Egina (Diod. Sic, iv., 72; Apollodor., iii., 12, 6; 
Pausan., ii., 80, 4), and Aristgeus in those of Ceos (Apollon. Rhod., 
Argonaut., ii., v. 498, etc. ; Schol. , a. h. I. ; Hygin., Poet, astron., 
ii., 4), these fables being properly parallel with that which G. 
■miith discovered at Babylon. 

We know of no particulars in regard to the ravages of wild 
>easts. The excessive multiplication of these animals, induced by 
lifferent circumstances, was one of the scourges which afflicted 
the inhabitants of Chaldaea and Babylonia. Astrological prognos- 
tications sometimes foretold them in connection with certain posi- 
tions of the stars (Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. III., pi. 51, 
iv., 1. 2; 54, 5, 1. 12; 58, 9, 1. 7 and 8; 60, 1. 115). This was 
also looked upon as a chastisement of divine anger. Comp., in 
the Bible, the lion which slays the prophet who failed faithfully 
to obey the command of Yahveh (1 Kings xiii. 19-30), and the 
children of Bethel torn by bears for having mocked Elisha' (2 
Kings ii. 23 and 24). 

Later astrological speculations, such as Berossus set forth to 
the Greeks in his books on this pseudo-science, subsequently 
forged a system absolutely analogous to that of the Manvantaras 
of the Hindus, which was, however, unknown to the Chaldseans of 
a remote antiquity, and did away completely with all the moral 
significance of the Deluge, ignoring Ea's decree, according to 
which no such cataclysm should ever again take place. In this 
system the destruction and renovation of the world become 
periodic, and are the fatalistic results of sidereal revolutions. 
Everything that exists on the earth must be alternately destroyed 
by a conflagration and by a deluge, the former when the sun, 
moon, and five planets are all together in the sign of Cancer, the 
latter when their conjunction takes place in Capricornus (Seneca, 
Natur. quaest., iii. 29). So far we have no reason for supposing 
that the Chaldoeo-Babylonians, in their accounts of mythologic 
times, had any knowledge of a conflagration similar to the one 
caused by the imprudent conduct of Phaethon in the Greek fable, 
and which occasioned the destruction of the earliest men (Philostr. , 



The Deluge. 403 

I have not revealed the decision of the great gods. — 
It is Hasisatra who interpreted a dream and under- 
stood that which the gods resolved upon/ 

" Then, when his resolve was arrested, Bel entered 
the vessel ; — he took my hand and caused me to rise. 
— He caused my wife also to rise, and caused her to 
be set at my side. — He turned round us and stopped 
still ; he approached our group. — ' Until now, Hasis- 
atra has been one of a perishing human race; — but 
behold now Hasisatra and his wife are about to be 
raised up to live like the gods, — and Hasisatra shall 

dwell far away, at the mouth of the rivers/ They 

carried me away and fixed my dwelling in a distant 
place, at the mouth of the rivers." 

This narrative follows very accurately the course of 
that, or rather of those, of Genesis, and from begin- 
ning to end the analogies are most striking. It is 

Heroic, prooem., 3, p. 667, ed. Olear.), according to some, or, as 
others thought, was combined with the deluge of Deucalion to 
bring about this result (Hygin., Fab., 152). Sayce [Records of the 
Past, vol. XL, pp. 115-118 [cf. Smith's Chald. Gen., Rev. Ed., 
pp. 172-174. Tr.] ) thinks he recognizes in the catastrophe 
described in the first part of the magic hymn in the Cuneif. 
Inscrip. of West. Asia (vol. IV., pi. 19, 1) a destruction of the 
city by fire from heaven, like that of Sodom and Gomorrah in the 
nineteenth chapter of Genesis. The conjecture is ingenious, but 
rests upon a very frail foundation, for the expressions of the text 
are too vague, too uncertain, and in some parts too contradictory 
to enable one to decide positively whether it is an inundation or 
a rain of fire to which they refer. It would be even possible to 
find in the poetic fragment an allusion to the Deluge, as does 
George Smith [Trans, of the Society of Bibl. Archseology, vol. I., p. 
89 ; cf. Fr. Lonormant, Les premieres civilisations, vol. II., p. 38). 



V 



404 Th& Beginnings of History. 

known — has been long since critically demonstrated 
— that chapters vi., vii., viii. and ix. of Genesis offer 
us two different narratives of the Deluge, one taken 
from the Elohist, the other from the Jehovist docu- 
ment, the two being skilfully combined by the final 
editor. .Respecting their text, which he evidently 
regarded as sacred, he has omitted nothing from 
either document ; the consequence being that all the 
circumstances are twice related in different words, 
and it is easy to separate one account from the other, 
each one giving a continuous, uninterrupted narra- 
tive, in spite of the manner in which the respective 
verses are interlaced. Bickell^) and the Abbe Vig- 
ouroux ( 2 ) have fancied recently that as far as the 
accounts of the Creation and the Deluge are con- 
cerned, the cuneiform documents have disproved the 
fact of the distinction between the two sources of 
Genesis, proving the primitive unity of its redaction ; 
that in fact the same repetitions may be found in the 
cuneiform documents. This was, however, drawing 
a premature conclusion from translations still very 
imperfect, which demanded a thorough revision; 
and confining ourselves now to the part which con- 
cerns the account of the Deluge, this revision, carried 
out according to strict philological principles, annihi- 
lates the arguments which it was supposed could be 
drawn from George Smith's version. ( 3 ) None of the 

(!) Zeitschrift filr Katholische Theologie, 1877, pp. 129-131. 

( 2 ) La Bible et les decouvertes modemes, 2d Ed., vol. I., pp. 165, 
190 and 251-254. 

( 3 ) The most striking example is that of col. ii., 1. 30-34, of the 
cuneiform document, where it was supposed might be found a 



The Deluge., 405 

repetitions of the final text of Genesis can be found in 
the Chaldsean poem ; on the contrary, it has con- 
firmed in a decisive manner the distinction between 
the two accounts, Elohist and Jehovist, cast together 
by the last redactor of the Pentateuch. Taking each 
account separately and parallelizing them, the Chal- 
dsean narrative is found to agree with each one indi- 
vidually in every step of its course, and not with the 
result of their union. It is easy to prove this by 
making the comparison between the three narratives 
in the manner following : 

first mention of the coming of the Deluge, before the reference 
to the final entrance into the ark, like that in Genesis vii. 10-12, 
which precedes 13-16. But this was owing to an error, which 
caused Smith [Chald. Gen., p. 267; corrected in Rev. Ed., by 
Sayce, p. 283. Tr.] to translate as "deluge" a well-known 
word, ada?inu, "time fixed, calculated, determined," correspond- 
ing to the Aramaic 'iddan, Syriac ( edon. 



406 The Beginnings of History. 









Genesis. 


Epopee 


of Uruk.i}) 


















Jehovist 
VI. 


Document. 


Elohist Document. 




, 11-16. 




I. 


5-8. 


VI., 11-12 


I. 


, 17-23. 


VII. 


1. 


VI., 13-14. 


I. 


, 24-27. 






VI., 15-16. 


I. 


, 28-35. 








I. 


, 36-38. 


VII. 


4. 


VI., 17-18. 


I. 


, 39-44. 


VII. 


2-3. 


VI., 19-21. 


I. 


, 45-52. 








II. 


, 2-24. 


VII. 


5. 


VI., 22. 


II. 


, 25-34. 


VII. 


7-9. 


VII., 6 ; 11-16. 


II. 


35-39. 


VII. 


16 b. 




II. 


40-50. 


VII. 


10; 12; 17. 


VII., 18-20. 


III. 


1-4. 


VII. 


23. 


VII., 21-22. 


III. 


5-18. 








III. 


19-20. 






VII., 24. 


III. 


21-23. 


VIII. 


2b; 3 a. 


VIII., 1; 2 a; 3 6. 


III. 


24-31. 








III. 


32-36. 






VIII., 4. 


III. 


37-44. 


VIII., 


6-12. 


(VIII., 5; 13 a; 14 
replaces this with 
a very different 
account, which 
does not contain 
the story of the 
birds. ) 

VIII., 15-17. 


III. 


45 a. 


VIII., 


13 6. 


VIII., 18-19. 


III., 


45 £-50. 


VIII., 


20. 


IX., 1-11. 


III. 


51-52. 






IX., 12-16. 


V 








IX 17. 


III. 


53. 








IV. 


1-11. 








IV. 


12-20. 


VIII. 


21-22. 




IV. 


21-22. 








IV. 


23-30. 









(!) The figures which we give here indicate the columns and 
the lines of the cuneiform tablet, as found in the transcription 
and interlinear translation of it in appendix V. 



The Deluge. 407 

The table, as I believe, very accurately represents 
the conformities and differences between the three 
narrations; that which they have in common and 
that which in each one is by way of peculiar coloring 
to the original picture. These are evidently three 
versions of the same traditional history; and among 
the Chaldajo-Babylonians on the one hand and the 
Hebrews on the other, we have manifestly two 
parallel streams issuing from an identical source. 
Nevertheless, it would be as well to note divergences 
of some importance on either side, proving that the 
stream of tradition was sundered in two at a very 
early epoch, and that the one which we find presented 
in the Bible is something more than an edition of the 
account preserved by the Chaldsean priesthood, ex- 
purgated on strict monotheistic principles. 

The Biblical narrative bears the stamp of an 
inland nation, ignorant of things appertaining to 
navigation. In Genesis the name of the Ark, Tebdh, 
signifies " chest," and not "vessel;" and there is 
nothing said about launching the ark on the water; 
no mention either of the sea, or of navigation ; or any 
pilot. In the Epopee of Uruk, on the other hand, 
everything indicates that it was composed among a 
maritime people; each circumstance reflects the 
manners and customs of the dwellers on the shores 
of the Persian Gulf. Hasisatra goes on board a 
vessel, distinctly alluded to by its appropriate appel- 
lation ; this ship is launched and makes a trial-trip 
to test it ; all its chinks are caulked with bitumen, 
and it is placed under the charge of a pilot. 

The Chaldseo- Babylonian narrative represents 



VJ 



408 The Beginnings of History. 

Hasisatra as a king, who goes on board his vessel 
surrounded by a whole retinue of servants and com- 
panions ; in the Bible none are saved but the family 
of Noah^ 1 ) The new human race all spring from 
the three sons of the patriarch. There is not a trace 
in the Chaldsean poem of the distinction — peculiar, 
by the way, to the Jehovist document of the Bible — 
of clean and unclean animals, or of the number of 
seven pair for each species of the former, although in 
Babylonia the number seven had a distinctly sacra- 
mental character. 

As regards the dimensions of the ark, we find a 
disagreement, not only between the Bible and the 
tablet copied by order of Asshur-bani-abal, but 
between this tablet and Berossus. Genesis and the 
cuneiform document give the dimensions of the ark 
in cubits ; Berossus reckons them in stadii. Genesis 
puts the ciphers of length and of breadth in the pro- 
portion of 6 to 1, Berossus of 5 to 2, the tablet in 
the British Museum of 10 to 1. On the other hand, 
the fragments of Berossus make no mention of the 
proportion of the dimensions of height and breadth, 
and the tablet says that these dimensions were equal, 

(!) In the Qora?i, which has evidently borrowed its account of 
the Deluge from popular sources, Nouh obtains permission from 
Allah that not only his family, but the few men who believe in 
his predictions, shall enter the ark with him (lxxi. 29). And in 
another place, God says, " We saved thus all those who were with 
him in a vessel completely filled up" (xxvi. 119). The orthodox 
Mussulman interpreters say that besides Nouh, his wife, his three 
sons and their wives, there were likewise in the vessel 72 persons, 
servants and friends, in all 80 (D'Herbelot, Bibliothlque Orientale, 
article Nouh). 



The Deluge. 409 

while the Bible speaks of 30 cubits of height and 50 
of breadth. But these differences in figures have 
only a secondary importance ; it is precisely in such 
matters that alterations and variations between the 
different editions of the same story are most quickly 
introduced. It should be remarked, moreover, that 
in Genesis the Elohist version only, with its usual 
fondness for figures, gives the dimensions of the ark, 
while the Jehovist alone speaks of the sending forth 
of the birds, an episode of considerable importance in 
the Chaldsean tradition. As to the variations which 
distinguish the narration of the Bible from that of 
the poem of Uruk at this point, the last, which adds 
the swallow to the dove and the raven, and does not 
make the dove the messenger of good news, are not 
of serious importance, to my thinking, and the essen- 
tial agreement is more striking in every way than are 
the variations, as it seems to me. 

But a most important feature is the absolute 
disagreement, regarding the duration of the Del- 
uge, between the Elohist and Jehovist versions, as 
well as between both these versions and the 
Chaldseo-Babj Ionian narrative, where we have the 
manifest trace of different systems applied to 
the ancient tradition of the calendrical concep- 
tions, which are not alike in any of the three 
sources, although every one appears to have origin- 
ated in Chaldsea. 

In the Elohist account, the epochs of the Deluge 
are indicated by the numbers of the order of the 
months ; but these numbers of order refer to a lunar 
year beginning on the 1st of Tishri (September- 



410 The Beginnings of History. 

October), at the autumnal equinox. Q This has been 
recognized by Josephus,( 2 ) and Michaelis,( 3 ) among 
the moderns, seems to me to have definitely settled 
the point.( 4 ). The rain begins to fall, and Noah 
enters into the ark on the 17th day of the second 
month, which is Marheshvan. The full force of the 
waters lasts 150 days, and on the 17th of the seventh 

( : ) St. Jerome (In Ezekiel viii. 1 ; Oper. omn., vol. III., p. 199) 
bears witness to the fact that the custom of beginning the year 
with the autumnal equinox was general among the people of 
Syria. In fact, the Syriac calendar opens with the month Teshrin I. 
(see the second table of appendix IV., at the end of this volume). 
The hag, or festival, in connection with a pilgrimage, which gave 
its name to the corresponding month in the calendar of Heliopolis 
in Coelosyria, was evidently a festival of the new year, like the 
rosh-hashanah, fixed at the same epoch, instituted by the Jews 
about the time of the Seleucides (Munk, Reflexions sur le culte des 
anciens Hebreux, p. 55). 

The Feast of Tabernacles, which took place on the 15th of the 
seventh month, is mentioned as the festival of the end of the year 
in Exod. xxiii. 16 and xxxiv. 22. The Hebrews before the Cap- 
tivity had therefore a secular year, beginning in the autumn, 
parallel with the religious year, beginning with the vernal 
equinox, the establishment of which was attributed to Mosheh, 
and regarded as having taken place immediately after the Exodus 
{Exod. xii. 2). 

( 2 ) Antiq. Jud., i., 3, 3 ; this is also acknowledged by the Tar- 
gum of Pseudo-Jonathan, and is besides the opinion of Raschi 
and Kimchi. 

( 3 ) Commentationes, p. 39 et seq. ; also Knobel, Die Genesis, 2d 
Ed., p. 79 et seq. [cf. 3d Ed., by Dillmann, p. 142 et seq. Tr.] 

( 4 ) Nevertheless, Tuch {Kommentar iiber die Genesis, p. 150 et 
seq. [2d Ed., by Arnold and Merx, p. 118 et seq. Tr.] ), Ewald 
(Jahrbucher der bibl. Wissenschaft, vol. VII., p. 8 et seq.), Lepsius 
(Qironol. der Egypter, p. 226 et seq.), and Schrader (Stud. z. krit. 
u. Erkl. d. bibl. Vrgeschichte, p. 151), erroneously, as I think, con- 
sider that we have to do with a year beginning on the 1st Nisan, 
with the vernal equinox. 



The Deluge. 411 

month, or Nisan (March- April), the ark conies to a 
stand-still on Mount Ararat. The 1st day of the 
tenth month, or Tammuz (June-July), near the time 
of the summer solstice, the mountains are bare. The 
1st day of the first month of the following year, or 
Tishri, at the autumnal equinox, the waters have 
entirely disappeared from the land, and N6ah comes 
forth from the ark on the 27th day of the second 
month. The Deluge has thus lasted altogether one 
lunar year, plus eleven days, or, as EwaldQ has cor- 
rectly remarked, one solar year of 365 days. In the 
climatic conditions of Babylonia and Assyria,( 2 ) the 
rains of the later autumn commence toward the end 
of November, when the water-level of the Euphrates 
and Tigris begins immediately to rise. The periodic 
overflow of the two rivers takes place in the middle 
of March, and attains its culminating point at the 
end of May. This being reached, the fall of the 
waters begins and continues constantly. By the end 
of June the waters have left the plains, and from 
August to November they stand at their lowest level. 
The epochs of the Deluge, according to the Elohist 
version, as we have just arranged them after Mi- 
chaelis and Knobel, agree very well with these phases 
of the increase and decrease of the two rivers of Me- 
sopotamia. They agree even better in the primitive 
system upon which the Elohist formed his own, and 
which has been ingeniously restored by Schrader,( 3 ) 

(*) Jahrb. d. biblisch. Wissenschaft, vol. VII., p. 9. 

( 2 ) Ritter, Erdkunde, Asien, vol. X., p. 1023 et seq. ; vol. XI., 
p. 1019. 

( 3 ) Studien zur Kritik und Erklser. der bibl. Urgeschichte, p. 150. 



VJ 



412 The Beginnings of History. 

this system attributing 300 days in all or 10 months 
to the duration of the Deluge, 150 days for it to 
reach the fullness of its strength and 150 for its 
decrease. In this system, the departure from the ark 
took place on the 1st day of the 601st year of Noah's 
life, or the 1st of Tishrt, at the autumnal equinox. 
And in this way the deliverance of the father of the 
new human race, as well as the compact of God with 
him and his children, took place on the very day 
which a very ancient opinion, already referred to in 
our sixth chapter, and still held among the Jews, 
maintained to be that of the Creation of the world. 
As to the beginning of the Deluge, it occurred, 
according to this system, on the 1st day of the third 
month, or at the commencement of that lunation the 
end of which coincided with the entrance of the sun 
into the sign of Capricornus, when the planetary 
conjunctions caused periodic floods, according to an 
astrological notion of Chaldsean origin,^) which, 
though apparently not very ancient, must have been 
originally suggested by the figures adopted in some 
of the sacerdotal schools of Babylon for the epoch 
of the cataclysm. 

The calendrical construction which connected the 
kings or antediluvian patriarchs with the solar man- 
sions, and is followed by the Epic of Uruk, also makes 
the beginning of the Deluge coincide with the winter 
rains, and not with the rise of the Euphrates and 
Tigris in the spring, assigning the period of the cata- 
clysm to the month of Shabat (January-February), 

(*) Seneca, Natur. quaest., III., 29. 



The Deluge. 413 

and placing it in the sign of Aquarius. I should be 
very reluctant to admit the exactness of the date — 
15th of Daisios — given according to Berossus as that 
of the Deluge, in the extract of Alexander Polyhistor ; 
for that would make the Deluge fall in the middle of 
the Assyrian month Sivan, at the beginning of July, 
in a season of absolute drought, just when the rivers 
have fallen to their very lowest level. It seems to me 
that there is an evident error here, not attributable to 
the author of the Chaldsean history himself, but to the 
writer who made extracts from his text. Berossus 
must have written ptrjvo^ oyddou nifmzifi xai dsx&TT), 
"the 15th of the eighth month," translating into Greek 
the name of the Assyrian month Arah-shamna ; and 
by a mistake easily accounted for, Cornelius Alex- 
ander may have made Daisios out of it, that being 
the eighth month in the Syro-Macedonian calendar, 
forgetting the difference between the beginning of 
this year and of the Chaldseo-Assyrian year. In 
reality, then, Berossus 7 original date need not neces- 
sarily have deviated by more than two days (from the 
15th to the 17th) from that adopted by the Elohist 
redactor of Genesis. Moreover, Knobel^) dwells, 
and with reason, on this point, that placing the be- 
ginning of the Deluge at the 15th or 17th day of a 
month would always bring it at the full of the moon ; 
this phase of the orb of night being associated, in the 
popular belief of Egypt and Mesopotamia, with the 
periodic rise of the Nile, Euphrates and Tigris. 
The Jehovist system is entirely different. Accord- 
ed Die Genesis, 2d Ed., p. 80. [But cf. 3d Ed., by Dillmann, 
p. 143. Tr.] 



VJ 



414 The Beginnings of History. 

ing to that, Yahveh informs Noah of the coming of 
the Deluge only seven days beforehand. The waters 
last in their strength forty days, and are falling for 
another forty. ( x ) After this period of eighty days, 
Noah sends the three birds out at intervals of seven 
days, thus making it the twenty-first day, after having 
opened his window for the first time, before he goes 
forth from the ark and offers his sacrifice to the 
Eternal. ( 2 ) Here, then, the phases of the cataclysm 

( J ) We follow the interpretation of Hupfeld {Die Quellen der 
Genesis, p. 135 et seq.), rather than that of Schrader (Studien zur 
Kritik und Erklserung der biblischen Urgeschichte, p. 152 et seq.), 
which declines to admit a duration of more than forty days in all 
in the text. 

( 2 ) The manner in which the final editor of Genesis has com- 
bined the verses of the Elohist and Jehovist versions, was, to a 
great extent, owing to the desire to make the figures of the second 
fit into the frame made by the epochs of the first, by adopting the 
following construction : 

The Deluge begins the 17th of the 2d 
month (adopted from the Elohist) . . . 17th of Marheshvan; 
at the end of 40 days (figure borrowed 
from the Jehovist), the waters of the 
Deluge have reached their greatest 
height, and the ark floats thereupon . . towards the beginning 

of the month of Tebeth. 
The strength of the cataclysm lasts in all 
150 days (figure adopted from the Elo- 
hist), including the 40 days above, and 
on the 17th of the 7th month the ark is 
grounded upon the top of Ararat . . . 17th of Nisan. 
The 1st of the 10th month (Elohist 
source) the mountains emerge .... 1st of Tammuz. 
After 40 days (figure borrowed from 
the Jehovist source), Noah opens the 
window of the ark and sends forth the 
first bird 10th of Ab : 



The Deluge. 415 

are evidently calculated upon the phases of the 
annual overflow of the Tigris and Euphrates, in the 
spring, to such an extent, indeed, that one can have 
no hesitation in referring the origin of the form itself 
to the tradition as received by the Jehovist writer at 
the cradle of the race of Terah, in Chaldsea. The 
inundation of the two Mesopotamian rivers lasts in 
fact 75 days on the average, from the middle of 
March to the end of May, and 26 days after, or at the 
end of 101 days in all (80 + 21 = 75 + 26 = 101), the 
period when the Jehovist writer makes Noah leave 
the ark, the inundated fields have become again 
entirely accessible. 

But the feature which bears the most decided 
mark of a Chaldaean origin, in the Jehovist account 
of the Deluge, is the prominence given to septenary 
periods, there being seven days between the announce- 
ment of the Deluge and its beginning, and seven days 
between each sending forth of the birds. As we have 
already remarked, the religious and mystical impor- 

21 days later, the dove returns for the 
last time, bringing the olive leaf (Jeho- 
vist source) 1st of Elul. 

On the 1st day of the 1st month of the 
following year (Elohist source), that is, 
a little more than 150 days after the 
waters have begun to fall, Noah becomes 
aware that they have gone down and 
that the earth is bare, but not in a 

habitable condition 1st of Tishri. 

He waits 57 days longer, that the soil 
may have time to harden, and goes 
forth from the ark on the 27th of the 
2d month (Elohist source) 27th of Marheshvan. 



416 The Beginnings of History. 

tance attributed to the heptad, the point of departure 
for the conception of the seven days of the Creation 
and of the invention of the week, is essentially of 
Chaldsean origin. We can trace its beginning among 
the Chaldaao-Babylonians, and can certify to very 
numerous applications of it among them. The story 
of Hasisatra in the poem of Uruk is carried on 
continuously by hebdomads. The violence of the 
Deluge, in this account, lasts seven days ; seven days 
likewise does the vessel rest on the mountain of 
ISTizir, when the waters begin to fall. It is true, 
indeed, that the building of the vessel takes eight 
days instead of seven ; but then the time necessary 
for the embarkation of provisions, animals and pas- 
sengers should be considered, so that the entire 
length of time consumed in Hasisatra's preparations, 
beginning with the vision sent him by Ea and con- 
cluding with the moment that he closes in the vessel 
at the approach of evening, when the rain is about 
to begin, can be stated at fourteen days or two 
hebdomads. This conceded, if the poem does not 
determine the intervals of time between the three 
sendings forth of the birds, there is no objection to 
applying at this point the figures of the Jehovist 
document of Genesis, counting seven days from the 
first to the second sending, seven days from the 
second to the third, and finally seven days from the 
departure of the bird, which returns no more, until 
the vessel is deserted. The entire interval between 
the announcement of the Deluge by Ea and the sacri- 
fice of Hasisatra is thus found to include seven heb- 
domads, a number evidently used with a purpose and 



The Deluge. 417 

predetermination. And the entire duration of the 
Deluge is exactly double this time in the account of 
the sacred writer, author of the Jehovist document — 
7x2x7, instead of 7 X 7, or 14 hebdomads, with an 
excess of only three days, owing to the fact that the 
author used the round number of 40 -f 40 = 80 days, 
instead of the exact number of 77, or. 11 hebdomads 
(7 + 4x7), in indicating the interval between the 
beginning of the diluvian rain and the sending forth 
of the first bird. If we furthermore reckon the 
interval which he gives between the announcement 
of the cataclysm by Yahveh and its beginning, it 
will be found that the figures of the Jehovist author 
amount in all to 7 X 2 x 7 + 7 days, and those of the 
system of the Chaldaean poem to 7x7. Thus we 
have all the way through, in either case, combinations 
of the septenary number. 

But when it comes to relating the ultimate fate of 
the righteous man saved from the cataclysm, the 
Chaldseo-Babylonian epic story and the Biblical 
account exhibit the most complete divergence. Noah 
lives 350 years longer among his descendants, and 
dies at the age of 950 years, according to Elohist 
figures. Hasisatra receives the gift of immortality ; 
he is taken away "to live like the gods," and 
carried "to a distant spot," whither the hero of 
Uruk goes to visit him, in order to learn the secrets 
of life and of death. But the Bible relates something 
similar to this regarding the great-grandfather of 
Noah : " Hanok walked with God, and he was no 
more, for God took him."^) Thus the Babylonian 

(i) Genes, v., 24. 
27 



VJ 



418 The Beginnings of History. 

tradition unites in the person of Hasisatra the facts 
distributed in the Bible between Hanok and Noah, 
the two individuals whom the sacred Book equally 
characterizes as having " walked with God.'Y) 

The author of the treatise On the Syrian Goddess, 
erroneously attributed to Lucian, has preserved for 
us the diluvian tradition of the Aramaeans, the direct 
offspring of that of Chaldaea, as related in the famous 
sanctuary of Hierapolis or Bambyce. 

"The majority of the people," says he,( 2 ) "relate 
that the founder of the temple was Deucalion- 
Sisythes, the same Deucalion under whom occurred 
the great inundation. I have also heard the account 
which the Greeks likewise give of Deucalion; the 
myth is thus conceived : The present race of men 
is not the first ; for there was formerly another, all 
the men of which have perished. We come of a 
second race, which decends from Deucalion, and has 
multiplied in the course of time. As to the first 
men, it is said that they were full of pride and inso- 
lence, and that they committed many crimes, not 
keeping their oaths, not exercising the laws of hospi- 
tality, not sparing suppliants; therefore they were 
punished by a tremendous disaster. Suddenly vast 
masses of water burst forth from the earth, and rains 
of an extraordinary abundance began to fall ; rivers 
flowed outside their beds, and the sea overpassed its 
bounds ; everything was covered with water, and all 
mankind perished. Deucalion alone was preserved 

(!) For Hanok see again Genes. v„, 24; for Noah. Genes, vi., 9. 
(2) De Dea Syr., 12 and 13. 



The Deluge. 419 

alive, that he might give birth to a new race, by 
reason of his virtue and his piety. This is the way 
in which he was preserved : He placed himself, with 
his children and his wives, in a great chest, which 
he had, and whither there came, to take refuge with 
him, swine, horses, lions, serpents and all other ter- 
restrial animals. He took them all in unto himself; 
and all the while that they were in the chest, Zeus 
inspired these animals with a reciprocal friendship, 
which prevented them from devouring each other. 
In this manner, shut up in a single chest, they floated 
as long as the waters were in their strength. Such 
is the Greek account of Deucalion. 

"But in addition to this tale, which is also related 
among them, the people of Hierapolis tell a marvelous 
story, to the effect that in their country there was 
opened an enormous chasm, which swallowed up all 
the waters of the flood. Then Deucalion raised an 
altar and dedicated a temple to Hera (' Athar-'ath§= 
Atargatis) near this very chasm. I have seen this 
chasm, which is very narrow and located beneath the 
temple. Whether it was larger beforetime, and is now 
contracted, I know not ; but I have seen it, and it is 
quite small. In memory of the circumstance which 
is related, they perform the following rite : Twice a 
year the water of the sea is brought into the temple. 
Not only the priests carry it in, but a multitude of 
pilgrims come from every part of Syria, from Arabia 
and even from beyond the Euphrates, bearing water. 
They pour it out in the temple, and it runs down 
into the chasm, which, notwithstanding its smallness, 
swallows up in this way no inconsiderable quantity. 



VJ 



420 The Beginnings of History. 

It is said that this is done in consequence of a reli- 
gious command given by Deucalion to preserve the 
memory of the catastrophe and of the benefit received 
by him from the gods. Such is the ancient tradition 
of the temple.'^ 1 ) 

India likewise furnishes us with an account of the 
deluge, which has a very strong affinity with that of 
the Bible, as well as the Chaldsean narrative. The 

(!) St. Melito, in his Apology, addressed to Marcus Aurelius, 
part of which has been preserved to us in the Syriac translation, 
gives an entirely different legend in regard to this chasm in the 
temple of Hierapolis, and the ceremony of the solemn outpouring 
of water. 

"Concerning Nebo, who is at Mabng," he says, "why should I 
write of him to you ? All the priests of Mabug know that it is 
the statue of Orpheus, Magian of Thrace. Hadran is likewise 
the statue of Zaradusht (Zoroaster), the Persian Magian. These 
two magi practised their enchantments on a well, situated in the 
forest of Mabug, in which dwelt an impure spirit, that molested 
and attacked all those who passsed by the spot where now the 
citadel of Mabug is built. These magi commanded Simi, daughter 
of Hadad, to draw water from the sea, and to empty it in the 
well, so that the spirit might no longer come out of it to molest 
the country, in accordance with the secrets of their magic" {Spi- 
celeg. Solesmense, vol. II., p. xliv. ; Renan, Mem. de V Acad, des 
Inscr., new series, vol. XXIII., 2d Part, p. 325). 

On the other hand, it is impossible not to recognize an echo of 
these fables, popular in all Semitic countries, about the chasm of 
Hierapolis, and the part assigned to it in the Deluge, in the enig- 
matic expressions of the Qoran in regard to the oven, tannur, 
which began to boil and throw up water that spread about every- 
where, and then the Deluge began (xi. 42 ; xxiii. 27). We know 
that this tannur suggested the most bizarre fancies to the Mussul- 
man commentators, who had lost the tradition of the history to 
which the prophet thus alluded. However, in another part of 
the Qordn it is distinctly said that the waters of the Deluge were 
absorbed into the bosom of the earth. 



The Deluge. 421 

oldest and most simple form of the story is found in 
the Qatcvpatha Brahmana, the approximate date of 
which we have endeavored to indicate above. (*) This 
fragment was translated for the first time by Max 
Miiller : ( 2 ) 

"One morning water was brought to Manu( 3 ) to 
wash with ; and when he had washed, a fish re- 
mained in his hands ; and it addressed these words 
to him : ' Protect me, and I will save thee/ ' From 
i what wilt thou save me ? ' — ' A deluge will carry off 
1 all creatures ; it is that from which I will save thee.' 
- How shall I protect thee?' The fish answered : i So 
i long as we are small, we live in great danger ; for 
1 fish swallows fish ; keep me at first in a vessel. 
' When I am too large for that, hollow out a basin to 
i put me in. When I have become still larger, carry 
'me to the Ocean. Then I shall be preserved from 
' destruction.' Very soon it grew to be a large fish. 
It said to Manu : ' In the very year when I shall 
1 have attained my full growth the deluge will over- 
take us. Build then a vessel and worship me. 
' When the waters rise, enter into this vessel, and I 
' will save thee.' 

"After having thus kept him, Manu carried the 
fish to the Ocean. In the year which it had indi- 

(!) P. 62. 

( 2 ) Sanskrit Literature, p. 425. See also Weber, Indischc Studien, 
vol. I., p. 161 ; Muir, Sanskrit Texts, vol. II., p. 324. [2d Ed., 
1872, vol. I., p. 181 et seq. Tr.] 

( 3 ) Manu Vaivasvata, the type and ancestor of mankind in the 
Indian legends. We shall recur to this personage in our tenth 
chapter. 



VJ 



422 The Beginnings of History, 

cated, Manu built a vessel, and worshiped the fish ; 
and when the deluge came he entered into the vessel. 
Then the fish came swimming toward him, and 
Manu fastened the cable of the vessel to the fish's 
horn, and by this means the fish caused him to pass 
over the Mountain of the North. The fish said : < I 
i have saved thee ; fasten the vessel to a tree, that the 
1 water may not carry it away while thou art upon the 
1 mountain ; as the waters fall, thou shalt descend.' 
Manu descended with the water, and that is called 
the descent of llanu on the Mountain of the North. 
The deluge had carried away every creature, and 
only Manu remained." 

Coming next, in order of time and complexity of 
narrative, which goes on continually accumulating 
fantastic and parasitic features, is the version of the 
enormously long epic poem of the Mahdbhdrata.i^) 
That of the poem entitled Bhdgavata-Purdna( 2 ) is 
still more recent and more fabulous. Finally, the 
same tradition is made the subject of an entire poem, 
of very late date, the 3£atsya-Purdna, an analysis 
of which is given by the great English Hinduist, 
Wilson.( 3 ) 

In the preface of the third volume of his edition 
of the Bhdgavata-Purdna, the illustrious Eugene 
Burnouf has carefully compared the three accounts 
known at the time of his writing (that of the Qata- 
patha Brdhmana has since been discovered), in order 

(i) Vanaparva, v. 12,746-12,804. 

( 2 ) Edition of Burnouf, vol. II., p. 177 of the text, 191 of the 
translation. 

(3) Preface to the Vishnu-Pur ana, p. li. [Ed. Murray, 1840.— 
Ed. Trtibner, 1864 et seq., L, p. lxxxi. Tr.] 



The Deluge. 423 

to throw light upon the question of the origin of the 
Hindu tradition of the deluge. He shows, in a 
discourse which deserves to be held up as a model of 
erudition, of subtlety and of critical acumen, that this 
tradition does not appear at all in the hymns of the 
Veclas, which contain only remote allusions to the 
fact of the deluge, these allusions seeming, more- 
over, to refer to a totally different form of legend ; 
also that this tradition was originally foreign to 
the system of the mcunvantaras, or periodic destruc- 
tions of the world, which was Hindu in its very 
essence. He concludes therefrom that the tradition 
must have been imported into India subsequently to 
the adoption of this last system, which, however, is 
very ancient, since it is common to Brahmanism and 
to Buddhism. Hence he is disposed to regard it as 
a Semitic importation, occurring in historic times, not 
coming through Genesis, because its influence could 
hardly have been felt in India at so remote an epoch, 
but with greater probability through the Babylonian 
tradition. (*) 

The discovery of an original edition of this last 
confirms the opinion of the illustrious Sanskrit 
scholar, whose name will live among the great lights 
of science in France. The dominant feature of the 
Indian account, holding a position of essential im- 
portance and making its distinctive characteristic, is 
the part assigned to a god who assumes the form of a 

( x ) Neve also admits the same thing: La tradition indienne du 
Deluge dans sa forme la plus ancienne, in Annates de philosophie 
chretienne, 4th series, vol. III. (January- April, 1851) [whole No. 
vol. 42. Tr.]. Albrecht Weber (Indiscke Studien, vol. I., pp. 161— 
232), however, upholds the contrary theory. 



424 The Beginnings of History. 

fish in order to warn Manu, guide his ship and save 
him from the deluge. The nature of the metamor- 
phosis is the only fundamental and primitive point, 
for the different versions vary in regard to the person 
of the god who takes this form. The Brdhmana 
specifies nothing; the Mahdbhdrata makes him 
Brahma, and for the editors of the Pur anas he is 
Vishnu. The fact is all the more remarkable, 
siuce the metamorphosis into a fish, matsyavatara, 
remains an isolated instance in Hindu mythology, 
foreign to its habitual symbolism, and does not pro- 
duce any ulterior development; there is no other 
trace to be found in India of the worship of fish, 
which assumed such importance and was so wide- 
spread among other ancient nations. Burnouf justly 
saw in this circumstance a mark of foreign importa- 
tion and the chief indication of its Babylonian origin, 
for classic testimony, since confirmed by indigenous 
monuments, gave conclusive evidence that in the 
religion of Babylon the conception of ichthyomor- 
phic gods, or gods in the form of fishes, played a more 
considerable part than in any other country. The 
part played by the divine fish with Manu, in the 
vi legend preserved in India, is similar to that of the 
god Ea, also called Shalman, "the saviour/ 7 in Ha- 
sisatra's case, in the narrative of the Epic of Uruk 
and in that of Berossus. This god, whose represent- 
ative type is now known with certainty on the Assy- 
rian and Babylonian monuments, is essentially the 
ichthyomorphic god,^) his sacred image nearly always 

(!) Fr. Lenormant, La legende de Semiramis, p. 33 et seq. ; Les 



The Deluge. 425. 

uniting the forms of fish and man. In the astrono- 
mical tablets there is frequent reference to the catas- 
terism of the " Fish of Ea," which is doubtless the 
same as our sign of Pisces, since it presides over the 
month of Adar.f 1 ) In accordance with the observa- 
tions which we have had occasion to make in our sixth 
chapter, upon the origin and significance of the zodi- 
acal signs among the Chaldseans, we should attribute 
to an assimilation of ideas, based upon the account of 
the deluge, the manner in which the sign of the 
fishes, originally of the "Fish of fia," has been 
placed side by side with that of Aquarius, whose 
connection with the tradition of the cataclysm has 
been proved. In this there is evident allusion to the 
part of a saviour, which the people who invented the 
Zodiac attributed to the god Ea in the deluge, as 
well as to the conception of an ichthyomorphic na- 
ture, more particularly belonging to this phase of his 
character. Ea is, moreover, ( 2 ) the legislator Oannes 
of Berossus' fragments, ( 3 ) half man and half fish, 
whose face, resembling the description given by the 
author of the Chaldcean History, has been recognized 
in the sculptures of the Assyrian palaces,( 4 ) and upon 

.premieres civilisations, vol. II., p. 133 ; Die Magie und Wahrsagekunst 
der Chaldseer, p. 168. [Chald. Magic, p. 157 et seq. Tr.] 

(!) Cuneif. Inscr. of West. Asia, vol. III., pi. 53, 2, 1. 13 and 28. 

( 2 ) See Fr. Lenormant, Magie und Wahrsagekunst, pp. 376-378 
\C~hald. Magic, p. 157 et seq. Tr.] 

( 3 ) Fragments 1 and 10 of my edition. 

( 4 ) Layard, Monuments of Nineveh, new series, pi. vi. 



VJ 



426 The Beginnings of History. 

the cylinders^ 1 ) — the Euhadnes of Hyginus( 2 ) and 
the Oes of Helladios.f) 

When two different nations are found to possess a 
similar legend with so special a point in common, 
which need not necessarily and naturally be referred 
to the original version of the story ; when, moreover, 
this point is clearly associated with the mass of reli- 
gious conceptions of one of these nations, but is iso- 
lated as regards the other, and foreign to the habits 
of its symbolism, an unvarying law of criticism 
forces us to conclude that the legend has been trans- 
mitted from one to the other in a form already fixed, 
thus constituting a foreign importation, superimposed 
on, though not confounded with, the genuinely na- 
tional and distinctive traditions of the people who 
come into possession of this other tradition without 
having originated it. 

It should be farther stated that in the Pur anas 
it is no longer Manu Vaivasvata whom the divine 
fish saves from the deluge, but a different person, 
the King of the Dasas, or fishermen, Satyavrata, " the 
man who loves justice and truth/' bearing a striking 
resemblance to the Hasisatra of Chaldsean tradition. 
And the Puranic version of the legend of the deluge 
is not to be scorned, notwithstanding the recent date 

( : ) Lajard, Culte de Mithra, pi. xvi., No. 7a; pi. xvii., Nos. 1, 3, 
5 and 8. 

( 2 ) Fab., 274. 

( 3 ) Ap. Phot. Biblioth., 279, p. 1593 [ed. Bekker]. 

Oannes and Euhadnes are connected with an Accadian form, 
Jfiakhan, " Ea the fish;" Oes simply with Ea, as the Aos of Da- 
mascius (De prim, princip., 125, p. 384, ed. Kopp). 



The Deluge. 427 

of its redaction, or the fantastic and often almost 
childish details with which its narrative is over- 
loaded. In some respects it is less Aryanized than 
the version of the Brdhmana or the Mahdhhdrata ; 
above all, it gives us some facts omitted in former 
versions, which must doubtless have appe tained to 
the primitive record, since they are found again in 
the Babylonian legend, and were undoubtedly pre- 
served in the oral tradition, popular and not Brah- 
man ic, with which the Pur anas are so deeply imbued. 
This has already been noticed by Pictet,^) who lays 
stress, and with reason, upon the following point in 
the redaction of the Bhdgavata-Purdna : " In seven 
days, said Vishnu to Satyavrata, the three worlds 
will be submerged by the ocean of destruction." 
There is nothing like it in the Brdhmana, nor in the 
Mahdbhdrata ; but we find in Genesis ( 2 ) that the 
Eternal says to Noah : " In seven days I will cause 
it to rain over all the earth ;" and a little farther on, 
again : " At the end of seven days, the waters of the 
deluge were over all the earth."( 3 ) And we have just 
proved the important part played by the successive 
hebdomadal periods in the system of the duration of 
the Deluge, adopted by the author of the Jehovist 
document included in Genesis, as well as in the sys- 
tem adopted by the editor of the Epopee of Uruk. 
The commands received by Satyavrata from the god 
incarnate as a fish, to deposit the sacred writings in a 
safe place, so as to put them beyond the power of 

(*) Les origines indo-europeennes, vol. II., p. 616. 

( 2 ) vii. 4. ( 3 ) Genes, vii. 10. 



\J 



428 The Beginnings of History. 

Hayagriva, the sea-horse, who dwells in the abysses 
as recorded in the Bhdgavata-Purdna, are no less 
deserving of attention, nor is the battle of the god 
against Hayagriva, who has stolen the VMas, and 
thus occasioned the cataclysm by disturbing the order 
of the world. This, again, is a circumstance omitted 
in the most ancient versions even of the Mahdb- 
hdrata, but it is of prime importance, and cannot be 
regarded as a spontaneous product of the soil of 
India, for it is difficult to ignore under its Hindu 
guise the exact counterpart of the tradition of the 
concealment of the sacred writings at Sippara by 
Hasisatra, as given in the version of the fragments 
of Berossus. 

It was, then, the Chaldsean form of the tradi- 
tion of the deluge which the Hindus adopted, in 
consequence of an intercourse which the commercial 
relations between the two countries renders histori- 
cally quite natural — a form which they subsequently 
developed in accordance with the peculiar exuberance 
of their imagination. They may have adopted this 
Chaldsean narrative with all the more facility because 
it assimilated with a tradition which, under a slightly 
different form, had been brought by their ancestors 
from the primitive cradle of the Aryan race. It is 
quite impossible to doubt that a recollection of the 
deluge made a part of the original stratum of 
legends held by this great race regarding the begin- 
nings of the world, for if the Hindus accepted the 
form of the narrative of Chaldsea, so closely resem- 
bling that of the account in Genesis, all the other 
branches of the Aryan race appear in possession of 



The Deluge. 429 

entirely original versions of the story of the cataclysm, 
which assuredly cannot have been borrowed either 
from Babylon or from the Hebrews. 

Among the Iranians we find in the sacred books 
which form the basis of the Zoroastrian doctrine, and 
date back to a very remote antiquity, a tradition in 
which we are obliged to recognize, with entire cer- 
tainty, a variation of that of the Deluge, but which 
is invested with quite a special character, and deviates 
in certain essential features from those which we have 
so far examined.^) This tradition tells us how 
Yima, who, in his original and primitive conception, 
was father of the human race, was warned by Ahu- 
ramazda, the good god, of the fact that the earth was 
to be destroyed by a devastating flood. The god 
commanded him to build a refuge, a garden in the 
form of a square, vara, protected by an inclosure, and 
to cause to be placed therein the germs of men, of 
animals and of plants, in order to preserve them 
from extermination. In fact, when the flood came, 
the garden of Yima alone was spared, with all that 
it contained ; and the announcement of its safety was 
brought thither by the bird Karshipta, sent by Ahu- 
ramazda.( 2 ) 

An account, found complete only in the Pehlevi 
Bundehesh,( d ) has, as I think, been erroneously com- 
pared with the Biblical and Chaldsean Deluge; 
however, as older books contain direct and distinct 

(!) In regard to this story, see Windischmann, Ursagen arischer 
Vcelker, p. 4 et seq. ; Kossowicz, Decern Zendavestae eoccerpta,, p. 
151 ; C. de Harlez, Avesta, vol. I., p. 91 et seq. 

( 2 ) Vendiddd, ii. 46 et seq. ( 3 ) Chapter vii. 



\J 



430 The Beginnings of History. 

allusions to some facts related in it ? ( x ) it must be 
regarded as dating back very much farther than does 
the redaction of this work, which, as we have already 
stated, is quite recent. Ahuramazda decides to exter- 
minate the Khrafctras, or malevolent beings created 
by Angromainyus, the spirit of evil. Tistrya, the 
genius of the star Sirius, therefore descends to earth 
by his command, and, assuming a man's form, causes 
it to rain for ten days. The waters cover the earth, 
and all the malevolent creatures are drowned. A 
violent wind dries the earth ; but there remain in it 
some germs of these creatures of the evil spirit, who 
may reappear. Tistrya descends again, under the 
form of a white horse, and produces a second deluge 
by making it rain ten days longer. To keep him 
from accomplishing his work, the demon Apaosha 
assumes the appearance of a black horse, and comes 
to fight against him ; but he is struck by a thun- 
derbolt by Ahuramazda, together with the demon 
Cpendjaghra, who has come to his assistance. Fi- 
nally, to complete the destruction, Tistrya, this time 
in the form of a bull, causes it to rain ten days more ; 
thus bringing about a third deluge, following, upon 
which the waters divide, making the four great and 
the twenty-three small seas. All this refers to a cos- 
mogonic act anterior to the creation of man. The 
Khrafctras, from whose presence Tistrya undertakes 
to purify the earth, are vicious and venomous ani- 
mals of Angromainyus^ creation, such as scorpions, 
lizards, toads, serpents, rats, etc., whose destruction 

( x ) See especially Yesht, viii. 18 et seq. ; Vendiddd, xix. 139. 



The Deluge. 431 

the devoted Mazdaeans consider it their duty to 
complete in the present world. There is no con- 
nection in such a tale as this with mankind, or a 
punishment for their sins. If it were absolutely 
desired to look for a parallel in the Bible for this 
first rain which fell upon the face of the earth, at 
the same time exterminating the noxious animals 
with which it was infested, and putting the soil in a 
condition to bring forth an abundant vegetation, the 
account of the Deluge would not be the place to turn 
to, but the fifth and sixth verses of the second 
chapter of Genesis. 

The Greeks had two principal legends, differing 
from each other, in regard to the cataclysm which 
destroyed primitive man. The first was connected 
with the name of Ogyges, the most ancient king of 
Boeotia^ 1 ) or Attica,( 2 ) an entirely mythical person- 
age, who is lost in the night of ages;( 3 ) his very 
name seems to be derived from the word used primi- 
tively to designate the deluge in the Aryan idioms, 
in Sanskrit dugha.i^) It was related that in his time 
all the country was invaded by the deluge, whose 

(!) Pausan., ix. 5, 1 ; Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod., Argonaut., III., 
T. 1177; Tzetz. ad Lycophr., Cassandr., v. 1206; Varr., De re 
rust., iii. 1. 

( 2 ) See Ottfr. Miiller, Orchomenos, p. 128 et seq. 

( 3 ) On Ogyges, his deluge and the idea of immense antiquity 
connected with his name, see Welcker, Griechische Goetterlehre, 
vol. I., p. 775 et seq. 

(*) Windischmann, Ursagen der arischen VoelTcer ; Pott, Zeit- 
schrift fur vergleichendes Sprachforschung, vol. V., p. 262; see, 
nevertheless, the objections of A. Kuhn, same journal, vol. IV., 
p. 89 ; Pictet, Les origines indo-europeennes, vol. II., p. 629. 



\J 



432 The Beginnings of History. 

waters rose up to heaven, and from which he escaped 
in a vessel with some companions.^) 

The second tradition is the Thessalian legend of 
Deucalion. Zeus having resolved to destroy the 
men of the bronze age, whose crimes have excited his 
anger, Deucalion, following the advice of his father, 
Prometheus, builds a chest, in which he takes refuge 
with his wife, Pyrrha. The deluge comes on; the 
chest floats at the mercy of the waves, during nine 
days and nine nights, and is at last deposited by the 
waters on the summit of Parnassus. Deucalion and 
Pyrrha issue forth, offer a sacrifice, and repeople the 
world, according to the command of Zeus, by throw- 
ing behind them "the bones of the earth," of the 
stones, which were changed into men.( 2 ) This deluge 

( 1 ) Pausan., ix., 5, 1 ; Scliol. ad Apollon. Rhod., iii., v. 1177; 
Serv. ad Virgil., Eclog., vi., v. 41. 

( 2 ) Strab., ix., p. 442; Pindar, Olymp., ix., v. 64 et seq. ; 
Apollon. Rhod., iii., v. 1085 et seq. ; Pausan., i., 40, 1 ; x., 6, 2 ; 
Apollodor., i., 7, 2; Pseudo-Lucian., De Dea Syr., 12; Ovid, 
Metamorph., i., v. 260-415. 

According to Hellanicos, it was on Othrys, and not on Par- 
nassus, that the chest of Deucalion rested (Ap. Schol. ad Pindar., 
Olymp., ix., v. 64), and it would then have been there that the hero 
founded a city and a temple. The Locrians designated Opontus 
(Pindar, Olymp., ix., v. 62 et seq.), or Cynos (Strab., ix., p. 425), 
as the place of his disembarkation and abode after the deluge. 
The Athenians imagined that Deucalion came from Lycorea, on 
Parnassus, to their city, and that. Amphictyon (the successor of 
Cranaos, under whom the deluge took place) was his son [Marm. 
Par., $6; Apollodor., i., 7, 2). At Argos they pointed out the 
mountain top where Deucalion left his chest, and erected an altar 
to Zeus Aphesios (fflym. Magn., v. 'A^ovoc). The Sicilians 
thought Etna to be the mountain on which Deucalion and Pyrrha 
were rescued from the Deluge (Nigid. ap. Schol. ad Germanic. 
/Caes., Arat., v. 283). 



The Deluge. 433 

of Deucalion has more the character of an universal 
deluge than any other in Greek tradition. Many 
authors say that it extended over all the earth, and 
that the entire human race perished^ 1 ) The memory 
of this event was celebrated at Athens by a ceremony 
called Hydrophoria,( 2 ) intended also to pacify the 
manes of those who had died during the cataclysm, 
having so close an analogy with the ceremony in use 
at Hierapolis, in Syria, that it is easy to see in it a 
Syro-Phoenician importation and the result of an 
assimilation established from a remote antiquity be- 
tween the deluge of Deucalion and the deluge of 
Hasisatra, as proved likewise by the author of the 
treatise On the Syrian Goddess.^) Near the temple 
of the Olympian Zeus a fissure in the earth was 
exhibited only one cubit in length, through which it 
was said the waters of the Deluge were swallowed 
up in the ground. ( 4 ) Thither each year, on the third 

We also hear of a Cretan Deucalion, son of Minos and Pasiphae 
(Odyss., T, v. 180; Apollodor., iii., 1, 2 and 3; Pherecyd. ap. 
Schol. ad Apollon. Pthod., Argonaut., iii., v. 1086). But there is 
nothing to indicate that, a diluvian tradition is connected with his 
name. 

( 1 ) Nonn., Dionys., vi., v. 367 et seq. ; Lucian., De saltat., 39; 
Timo, 3; Pseudo-Lucian., De Dea Syr., 12; Steph. Byz., v. 
'Ikoviov; Virgil, Georg., i., v. 61 et seq.; Hygin., Fab., 152; 
Serv. ad Virgil., Eclog., vi., v. 41. 

( 2 ) See K. Fr. Hermann, Gottesdienstl. Alterthumer, \ 58, 22; 
August Mommsen, Heortologie, Antiquarische Writer suchung en uber 
die Stsedtischen Feste der Athener, p. 365. 

( 3 ) It is owing to this assimilation again that Plutarch (De 
solert. anim., 13, p. 37, ed. Reiske) speaks of the dove sent by 
Deucalion to see if the deluge had ceased, a circumstance not 
referred to in any Greek mythology. 

( 4 ) Pausan., i., 18, 7. 

28 



\J 



434 The Beginnings of History. 

day of the festival of the Anthesteria, a day of 
mourning, dedicated to the dead,( x ) that is to say, the 
13th day of the month Anthesterion, toward the 
beginning of March,( 2 ) persons came to pour water 
into the chasm,( 3 ) as at Bambyce, besides flour min- 
gled with honey, ( 4 ) after the manner of the Athenians 
at their funeral sacrifices, who poured this mixture 
into a trench dug to the westward of the tomb.( 5 ) 

Others, however, limited the extent of Deucalion's 
deluge to Greece. ( 6 ) They even said that this catas- 
trophe had destroyed only the majority of the popu- 
lation of the country/ 7 ) and that many persons had 
been able to save their lives on the highest moun- 
tains^ 8 ) Thus the legend of Delphi relates that the 
inhabitants of that town, following the wolves in 
their flight, took refuge in a grotto on the summit of 
Parnassus, where they built the city of Lycorea,( 9 ) 
the foundation of which is, on the other hand, at- 
tributed by the Chronicle of Paros to Deucalion, 
after he had produced a new race of men.( 10 ) The 
idea that there were various individuals simultane- 
ously rescued at various points was necessarily sug- 

( x ) On the different rites which filled this day, see A. Momm- 
sen, Heortologie, pp. 864-369. 

(2) Plutarch, SulL, 14. ( 3 ) Etym. Magn., v. 'Tdpcxpopia. 

( 4 ) Pausan., i., 18, 7. 

( 5 ) Clideni. ap. Athen., x., p. 409; Chr. Petersen, in the Phil- 
ologus, Supplem. i., p. 178; cf. Homer, Odyss., K, v. 517. 

( 6 ) Apollodor., L, 7, 8; Pausan., v., 8, 1 ; Conon, Narrat., 27. 

( 7 ) Justin., ii., 6. 

( 8 ) Plat., Be leg., in., p. 677; Apollodor., L c. 

( 9 ) Pausan., x., 6, 2. 

( 10 ) See Ottfr. Muller, Die Dorier, vol. I., p. 212. 



The Deluge. 435 

gested to later mythographers by the desire to recon- 
cile the different local legends in quite a number 
of places in Greece, where another than Deucalion 
was named as the hero saved from the deluge^ 1 ) 
One of these was Megaros, the eponym of the city 
of Megara, son of Zeus, and one of the Sithnide 
nymphs, who, warned of the Deluge that was immi- 
nent by the cries of the cranes, sought refuge_on 
Mount Geranion.( 2 ) Another was the Thessalian 
Cerambos, who, it was said, was enabled to escape 
the deluge by rising into the air, by means of wings 
given him by the nymphs • ( 3 ) and still another, 
Perirrhoos, son of Aiolos, whom Zeus Naios pre- 
served from the cataclysm at Dodona.( 4 ) On the 
island of Cos, the people held that Merops, son of 
Hyas, was the hero saved from the deluge, and that 
he gathered under his rule in their island the rem- 
nants of mankind preserved with him.( 5 ) In the 
tradition of Ehodes only the Telchines ( 6 ) escape the 
deluge, and in Crete Iasion.( 7 ) In Samothracia the 
part of hero saved from the deluge was attributed to 
Saon,( 8 ) said to be the son of Zeus or of Hermes ;( 9 ) 

( 1 ) See Gerhard, Griech. Mythologie, \ 689, 2. 

(2) Pausan., i., 40, 1. 

( 3 ) Ovid, Metamorph., vii., v. 354 et seq. 

( 4 ) Bekker, Anecdoct. grace, vol. I., p. 283. — For Aristotle 
(Meteorol., i., 14), Deucalion's deluge was localized in Thessaly, 
the country of Dodona and the basin of the Acheloos. 

( 5 ) Schol. ad Iliad., A, v. 250. (6) Diod. Sic, v., 56. 

( 7 ) Schol. ad Odijss., E, v. 125. 

( 8 ) Diod. Sic, v., 48 ; see Ottfr. Miiller, Orchomenos, pp. 65 and 
157 ; Klausen, JEneas und die Penaten, vol. I., p. 363 et seq. 

( 9 ) Festus (v. Salios) compares Saon with the Salios of 
Mantinea. 



VJ 



436 The Beginnings of History. 

he seems to be simply an heroic form of the Hermes 
Saos^ 1 ) or Socos,( 2 ) the object of a particular cult on 
the island, and the god in whom Philippe Berger 
has correctly recognized a Phoenician importation, 
the Kena'anite Sakun, identified elsewhere with 
Hermes,( 3 ) Dardanos, who is made to reach Samo- 
thracia immediately after these events,( 4 ) comes from 
Arcadia, whence he was driven by the deluge. ( 5 ) 

In all these Greek accounts of the deluge it is 
evident that the ancient tradition of the cataclysm 
by which all mankind were destroyed, and which was 
common to all the Aryan nations, is confused, as 
Knobel has correctly perceived,( 6 ) with the more or 
less distinct recollections of local catastrophes, occa- 
sioned by extraordinary overflowings of the banks 
of lakes or rivers by the rupture of the natural 
embankments of certain lakes, by the depression of 
portions of the sea-coast, by tidal waves following 
upon earthquakes, or upon partial upheavals of the 
ocean-bed. ( 7 ) We note events of this character fre- 

(!) See Welcker, Die JEschyl. Trilogie, p. 217. 

( 2 ) Iliad, Y, v. 72; Suid., *. v. 

( 3 ) See in the Gazette archeologique, for 1880 [pp. 18-31], the 
fourth memoire of Philippe Berger on the Carthaginian Triad 
(La Triade Car thagi noise). 

( 4 ) Diod. Sic, v., 48; Dionys. Halicarn., Aniiq. rom., i., 61; 
Serv. ad Virgil., yEneid, iii., v. 167. 

( 5 ) Dionys. Halicarn., Z. c. ; see Klausen, ^Eneas und die 
Penaten, p. 875 et seq., and p. 388. 

( 6 ) Die Genesis, 2d Ed., p. 78 et seq. [3d Ed., by Dillmann, p. 
143 et seq. Tr.] 

(7) Strabo, I., pp. 51 and 54. 



The Deluge. 437 

quently occurring in Greece^ 1 ) in the district located 
between Egypt and Palestine, near Pelusium and 
Mount Casios,( 2 ) and likewise in the Cimbrian 
Chersonese.( 3 ) The Greeks related that in the primi- 
tive ages their country had experienced several 
of these catastrophes ;( 4 ) Istros( 5 ) claimed four great 
ones, one of which had opened the Straits of the 
Bosphorus and the Hellespont, carrying the waters 
of the Pontus Euxinus into the iEgean Sea and 
submerging the neighboring islands and coasts.( 6 ) 
This undoubtedly was the Samothracian deluge, 
from which the inhabitants of the country who 
succeeded in escaping did so only by climbing to 
the highest point of the mountains rising there; 
afterwards, in gratitude for their preservation, they 
consecrated the entire island by encircling its shores 
with a girdle of altars dedicated to the gods.( 7 ) In 
the same way, the tradition of the deluge of Ogyges 
seems to be associated with the recollection of an 
extraordinary rise in Lake Copais, inundating the 

(i) Thucyd.., III., 89 ; Diod. Sic, XII., 59, and XV., 48 ; Strab., 
VIII., p. 384 et seq. 

( 2 ) Strab., XVI., p. 758. 

(») Posidon. up. Strab., II., p. 102 ; VII., p. 292 et seq. ; Flor., 
III., 3. 

(*) Plato, (kit., 111. 

( 5 ) Eustath. ad Dionys. Perieg., v. 513. 

( 6 ) Strat. ap. Strab., I., p. 51 ; Pliny, Hist. Nat, II., 205 ; Val. 
Place, II. , v. 617 et seq. ; cf. Herod., VII., 6. 

The rupture of the Straits of Messina, between Italy and Sicily, 
was ascribed to a convulsion of the same character: Diod. Sic, 
IV., 85; Dionys.. Perieg., v. 473. 

( 7 ) Diod. Sic, V., 47; cf. Tit. Liv., xlv., 5; Juven., III., v. 
144. 



VJ 



438 The Beginnings of History. 

whole of the great Boeotian valley,^) a recollection 
afterwards exaggerated by the legend, as is always 
the case, especially by connecting with this local 
disaster features belonging to the popular stories 
about the primitive deluge, which happened before 
the dispersion and separation of the ancestors of the 
two races, Semitic and Aryan. It is also probable 
that some event that took place in Thessaly, or 
rather in the region of the Parnassus,( 2 ) determined 
the localization of the legend of Deucalion, which 
nevertheless, as we have already noticed, continues to 
preserve a more universal character than the others, 
whether the deluge be considered as extending over 
the whole earth or only over the whole of Greece. 

Howsoever it be, the different accounts were re- 
conciled by admitting three successive deluges, that 
of Ogyges, that of Deucalion, and that of Darda- 
nos.( 3 ) General opinion fixed the deluge of Ogyges 
as the most ancient of the three,( 4 ) and chronogra- 
phers placed it at 600 years,( 5 ) or about 250 years, ( 6 ) 

( 1 ) Freret, Mem. de V Acad, des inscriptions, 1st series, vol. 
XXIII., p. 139 et seq. ; Ottfr. Miiller, Orchomenos, p. 25 ; Maury, 
article Deluge, in the Encyclopedie Nbuvelle ; Hktoire des religions 
de la Grece, vol. I., p. 88. 

( 2 ) Forchammer, Annates de V Institut archeologique, vol. X., p. 
284 et seq. 

(3) Norm. Dionys., III., v. 204 et seq. ; Schol. ad Plat., Tim., p. 
22, ed. Stephan. 

( 4 ) Jul. African, ap. Euseb., Prsepar. evangel., X., 10; Clem. 
Alex., Stromal., I., p. 320 et seq., ed. Sylburg ; Nonn., I. c; Serv. 
ad Virgil, Eclog., VI., v. 41. 

(5) Solin., XI., 18. 

( 6 ) Euseb., Chron. Armen., pp. 273 and 281, ed. Mai ; Syncell., 
pp. 131, 280 et seq., 290, edit, of Bonn. 



The Deluge. 439 

before Deucalion's. But this chronology was far from 
being universally accepted, and the people of Samo- 
thracia held that their deluge had preceded all the 
others.f 1 ) The Christian chronographers of the third 
and fourth centuries, like Julius Africanus and Euse- 
bius, adopted the dates of Hellenic chronographers 
for the deluges of Ogyges and Deucalion, inscribing 
them upon their tablets as separate events from the 
Mosaic Deluge, which they believe to have happened 
a thousand years before that of Ogyges. ( 2 ) 

In Phrygia, as in Greece, the tradition of the 
deluge was a national one. The town of Apamea 
derived its cognomen of Kibotos, or "ark," there- 
from, and claimed to be the place where the ark had 
rested. ( 3 ) Iconion also advanced the same preten- 
sions,^) and in like manner the inhabitants of the 
country of Milyas, in Armenia, exhibited the ruins 
of the ark on the top of a mountain, called Baris,( 5 ) 
to the pilgrims on Ararat during the early Christian 
centuries,( 6 ) very much as Berossus tells us that in 
his day persons visited the fragments of Hasisatra's 
vessel on the Gordysean Mountains. 

(i) Diod. Sic, V., 47. 

( 2 ) Euseb., Chron. Armen., pp. 265 and 273, ed. Mai. 

( 3 ) Orac. SibylL, I., v. 261 et seq. ; Cedren., Histor. Compend., 
II., p. 10, ed. of Paris ; see Ewald, Jahrbucher der biblischen Wis- 
senschaft, 1853-4 [vol. VI.], pp. 1 and 19. 

On the name Kibotos, borne by the town of Apamea : Strabo, 
XII., p. 576 ; Ptol. V., 2, 25 ; Pliny, Hist. Nat., V., 29. 

( 4 ) Steph. Byz., v. 'Ikoviov. 

( 5 ) Nicol. Damasc. op. Joseph., Antiq. Jud., L, 3, 6. 

( 6 ) St. John Chrysostom, JDe perfection, carit., vol. VI., p. 350, 
ed. Gaume. 



\J 



440 The Beginnings of History. 

During the second and third centuries of the 
Christian era, in consequence of the syncretic infil- 
tration of Jewish and Christian traditions, which 
permeated even the minds of those yet remaining in 
paganism, the sacerdotal authorities of the Phrygian 
Apamea caused some coins to be struck off, having 
for emblem an open ark, in which were the patri- 
arch rescued from the Deluge and his wife, receiving 
the dove, which bears the olive branch, and on the 
obverse the same two individuals, after having left 
the ark to take possession of the earth^ 1 ) On the 
ark is inscribed the name NQE, the very form under 
which the name of Noah is presented in the Greek 
version of the Bible, called the Septuagint. Thus, 
at this epoch, the pagan priesthood of the Phrygian 
city had adopted the Biblical narrative, even to the 
names, and grafted it upon the ancient indigenous 
tradition. The story was also told of a holy man 
named Annacos,( 2 ) who had reigned a little before 
the Deluge, which he predicted, occupying the throne 
more than 300 years; evidently a reproduction of 
the Hanok of the Bible, with his 365 years of life 
in the way of the Lord.( 3 ) 

As for the Celtic family of nations, we find in the 

(!) Eckhel, Doctrina namorum veterum, vol. III., pp. 134-139 ; 
Ch. Lenormant, in Melanges a" archeologie of the Rev. Fathers 
Martin and Cahier, vol. III., p. 199 et seq. ; Madden, Numismatic 
Chronicle, 1866, pp. 173-219; Fr. Lenormant, Le Monnaie dans 
Vantiquite, vol. III., p. 123 et seq. 

( 2 ) Steph. Byz., v. 'Ikovlov. Suidas gives the name the form 
Of Nannacos : v. Navvanoc. 

( 3 ) Buttman was the first to recognize this fact: Mythologus, 
vol. I., p. 176 et seq. 



The Deluge. 441 

bardic poetry of the Cymris, in Wales, a tradition of 
the deluge which, notwithstanding the recent date 
of its redaction, summarized under a concise form 
called the Triads, is in its turn deserving of our 
attention. As is always the case, the legend is local- 
ized in the country itself, and the deluge is one of 
three terrible catastrophes on the island of Prydain, 
or Britain, the other two being a devastation by 
fire and a disastrous drought. "The first of these 
events," it is said, " was the eruption of Llyn-Ilion, 
or ' Lake of the Waves/ and the overwhelming of the 
whole face of the country by an inundation (bawdd), 
in which all mankind were drowned, with the excep- 
tion of Dwyfan and Dwyfach, who were rescued in 
a ship without rigging, and by these two the isle of 
Prydain was repeopled.'^ 1 ) " Although the Triads, 
under their present form, date back only to the 
thirteenth or fourteenth century," says Pictet,( 2 ) 
"some of them are undoubtedly connected with very 
old traditions, and in the one in question nothing 
points to its having been borrowed from Genesis. 
This is perhaps not equally true of another Triad, ( 3 ) 
wherein a vessel called JSTefydd-Naf-Neifion is re- 
ferred to, carrying a pair of every kind of living 
creatures, when Lake Llyn-Ilion broke its bounds; 
this vessel bearing too close a resemblance to Noe ? s 
ark. The name itself of the patriarch may have 
suggested this obscure triple epithet, formed evi- 
dently, however, upon the principle of Cymric alli- 

(!) Myvyrian Archseology of Wales, vol. II., p. 59, Triad 13. 

( 2 ) Les origines indo-europeennes, vol. II., p. 619. 

( 8 ) Myvyrian Archseology of Wales, vol. II., p. 71, Triad 97. 



V 



442 The Beginnings of History. 

teration. In the same Triad figures the very enig- 
matical history of the horned oxen (y chain bannog) 
of Hu, the powerful, which drew the Avanc (beaver 
or crocodile?) from the Llyn-Ilion, so that the inunda- 
tion of the lake should cease. The solution of these 
enigmas can hardly be expected, unless we succeed 
in reducing to order the chaotic mass of the bardic 
monuments of mediaeval Wales ; though, meanwhile, 
there can be no question as to the Cymris having an 
indigenous tradition of the deluge." 

A vestige of the same tradition is likewise found 
in the Scandinavian Edda,( l ) in combination, how- 
ever, with a cosmogonic myth. The three sons of 
Borr, Othin, Wili and We, grandsons of Buri, the 
first man, slay Ymir, the father of the Hrimthursar, 
or ice-giants, and use his corpse for constructing the 
world. The blood flows from his wounds in such 
abundance that the whole race of giants is drowned 
in it, with the sole exception of Bergelmir, who is 
saved in a boat with his wife, and who reproduces 
the exterminated race. Pictet again remarks : ( 2 ) 
" It may be perceived that this myth has no connec- 
tion with the universal tradition, except in its final 
incidents, which, however, suffice to connect it with 
the common source." 

The Lithuanians were the last among the Euro- 
pean nations to embrace Christianity, and their lan- 
guage has deviated less than any other from its 
Aryan original. They possesss a legend of the 

(*) Vafthrudnimnal, str. 29. 

( 2 ) Les origines indo-europeennes, vol, II., p. 620, 



The Deluge, 443 

deluge, the basis of which appears to be ancient, 
although it has assumed the naive character of a 
popular tale, and it is likely that certain details may 
have been borrowed from Genesis at the time of the 
first preaching of the missionaries of Christian ity. 
According to this legend,^) the god Pramzimas, 
seeing the earth to be full of disorder, sends two 
giants, Wandu and Wejas, the water and the wind, 
to ravage it. They devastate everything in their 
fury, and only a few men escape upon a mountain- 
top. At this juncture, Pramzimas, who is in the 
act of eating celestial nuts, is touched with com- 
passion and drops a shell near the mountain, and in 
it the men take refuge, and the giauts respect this 
shelter. Escaped the disaster, they afterwards dis- 
perse, and a single very aged couple remain in that 
country alone, miserable, because they have no chil- 
dren. Pramzimas, to comfort them, sends them his 
rainbow and counsels them "to jump over the bones 
of the earth," thus curiously suggesting the oracle 
received by Deucalion. The two old married people 
jump nine times, and the result is nine pairs, who 
become the ancestors of the nine Lithuanian tribes. 

While the tradition of the deluge occupies so 
conspicuous a place among the legendary memories 
of all the branches of the Aryan race, the monu- 
ments and original texts of Egypt, with all their 
cosmogonic speculations, do not afford a single, even 
remote allusion to such a cataclysm. When the 
Greeks told the story of Deucalion's deluge to the 

( l ) Hanusch, Slaivischer My thus, p. 234, according to Narbutt; 
Pictet, Les origines indo-europeennes, vol. II., p. 620. 



VJ 



444 The Beginnings of History. 

Egyptian priests, they were informed that the valley 
of the Nile had been preserved from that calamity^ 1 ) 
as well as from the conflagration occasioned by Phae- 
thon;( 2 ) they even went so far as to say that the 
Hellenes were childish in attaching so much impor- 
tance to this event, for there had been a great num- 
ber of analogous local catastrophes. ( 3 ) According to 
a passage of Manetho,( 4 ) on which, however, there 
rests a strong suspicion of textual interpolation, 
Thoth, or Hermes Trismegistus, had himself, before 
the cataclysm, inscribed the first principles of science 
on stelas, in hieroglyphic characters, and in the 
sacred language. After the cataclysm, the second 
Thoth translated into the vulgar tongue the cod tents 
of these stelas. This is the only mention of the 
deluge coming from an Egyptian source; Manetho 
himself does not refer to the subject again in any 
part of his Dynasties, as it has come down to us, this 
being his only perfectly authentic work. The silence 
of all the other myths of the Pharaonic religion 
regarding this same legend makes it most probable 
that this account is simply a foreign tradition, re- 
cently introduced, and doubtless of an Asiatic and 
Chaldsean origin. Says Maury :( 5 ) "The Seriadic 
country, where the passage in question locates the 
hieroglyphic columns, could not well have been other 
than Chaldsea. This tradition, though unknown to 
the Bible, had a place in the popular legend of the 
Jews at the beginning of the Christian era, this 

(i) Diod. Sic, I., 10. ( 2 ) Plat., Tim., p. 22, ed. Stephan. 

( 3 ) Plat., Tim., p. 23. (*) Ap. SyncelL, p. 40. 
( 5 ) Article Deluge in the Eneyclopidu nouvdle. 



The Deluge. 445 

circumstance confirming our supposition, as the He- 
brews must have become familiar with it during: the 
Babylonian captivity. Josephus (*) tells us that the 
Patriarch Sheth, foreseeing the double destruction 
by fire and water predicted by Adam, in order that 
the wisdom and science of astronomy should not 
perish, set up two columns, one of brick, the other of 
stone, engraving upon them this knowledge, and that 
they still exist in the Seriadic country." This story 
is evidently only a variation of the Chaldsean account 
of the tablets of terra-cotta, bearing the divine rev- 
elations and first principles of all the sciences, which 
Hasisatra was commanded by Ea to bury before the 
deluge "in the city of the Sun, Sippara," as given 
a little above in the extracts from Berossus.( 2 ) 

These stories of tablets, which contained the 
statement of the divine mysteries and the narrative 
of the beginning of the world, and were buried by 
the kings of the primitive ages that they might 
be preserved from all chance of destruction, and 
discovered by the men of later ages, occupied an 
important place among the popular fables of the 
Chaldseo-Babylonians. It is thus that the mutilated 
document in the British Museum, containing the frag- 
ments of the history of the first monstrous generatious 
of men with birds' heads, sprung from the womb of 
chaos, according to the tradition of Kuti (Cutha),( 3 ) is 

(!) Antiq. Jud., I., 2, 3. 

( 2 ) Fr. Lenorinant, Essai de commentaire des fragments de Berose, 
p. 276. 

( 3 ) G. Smith, Chaldsean Account of Genesis, pp. 102-106. [Rev. 
Ed., pp. 92-96. Tr.] 



446 The Beginnings of History. 

given as the copy of a tablet written by a king of the 
mythical generations, who is said to have buried it in 
the foundation of the famous Temple of Nergal. This 
fabulous monarch is reputed to have finished his ac- 
count with these words : " O thou, king, viceroy, 
prince, or whosoever thou mayest be, — whom the di- 
vinity shall call and who shalt govern the kingdom, — 
who shalt rebuild this temple, I write this for thee ; — 
in the city of Kuti, in the foundations of the temple 
of the god who manifests himself in valor, — of the 
sanctuary of Nergal, I leave this for thee. — See this 
tablet and — listen to the words of this tablet ; — be not 
rebellious, be not wanting in any respect, — be not over- 
come with fear, be not turned aside ; — then thy foun- 
dations will be firm, — thou shalt be glorious in thy 
works, — thy fortresses will be strong, — thy canals full 
of water, — thy treasures, thy wheat, thy silver, — thy 
furniture, thy provisions — and thy implements will 
be multiplied." One of the books of the augural 
collection, of which we have the catalogue in one of 
the tablets of the Palace Library of Nineveh, com- 
menced with these words : " In the midst of the city, 
tablets of clay have been placed in a safe spot,"^) 
\J and it is thus designated on the catalogue. 

The Egyptians, however, admitted a destruction 
of the first men by the gods on account of their 
rebellion and their sins. This event was related 
in a chapter of the sacred books of Tahut, the 
famous Hermetic Books of the Egyptian priesthood, 
which was engraved upon the partition walls of one 

( T ) Cuneif. Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. III., pi. 52, 3, obv., 1. 36 : 

Ina lib ali duppi libitti izzazu. 



The Deluge. 447 

of the most secluded halls of the mausoleum of 
King Seti I., at Thebes. The text of it has been 
published and translated by Edouard Naville.^) 

The scene is laid at the end of the reign of the 
god Ra, the first terrestrial reign, according to the 
system of the priests of Thebes ; the second, according 
to the system of the priests of Memphis, followed by 
Manetho, who placed the reign of Phta'h at the 
beginning of things, before that of Ra. Angered 
by the impiety and crimes of the men he had made, 
the god assembles the other gods to hold a council 
in the greatest secresy, "so that men may not see it, 
and that their hearts may not fear." 

"Said by Ra to Nun:( 2 ) 'Thou, the eldest of the 
gods, of whom I am born, and you, ancient gods, 
behold the men who are born of myself; they speak 
words against me; tell me what you would do in 
this matter; behold, I have waited, and I have not 
slain them before having heard your words/ 

"Said by the Majesty of Nun: 'My son Ra, 
greater god than he who hath made him and hath 
created him, I remain in great fear before thee ; thy- 
self shalt deliberate in thyself/ 

"Said by the Majesty of Ra: 'Lo, they fly into 
the country, and their hearts are full of fear/ .... 

" Said by the gods : ' May thy face permit it, and 
may these men be smitten who plot wicked things, 
thy enemies, and may no one [exist among them].' " 

A goddess, whose name has unfortunately disap- 

(*) La destruction des hommes par les dieuz, in the Transactions 
of the Society of Biblical Archeeology , vol. IV., pp. 1-19. 
( 2 ) Personification of the primordial abyss. 



VJ 



448 The Beginnings of History. 

peared, but who seems to be Tefnut, identified with 
Hat'hor and Sekhet, is then sent to cany out the 
sentence of destruction. "This goddess went forth 
and slew the men upon the earth. — Said by the 
Majesty of this god: 'Come in peace, Hat'hor, thou 
hast done [what has been commanded thee]/ — Said 
by this goddess : i Thou art living, for I have been 
stronger than men, and my heart is content.' — Said 
by the Majesty of Ra: 'I am living, for I will rule 
over them, [and I will complete] their ruin.' — And, 
lo, Sekhet, during several nights, trampled their 
blood under foot as far as the city of Ha-khnen-su 
(Heracleopolis)." 

But the massacre being accomplished, the anger 
of Ra is appeased; he begins to repent of what he 
has done. He is entirely calmed by a great expia- 
tory sacrifice. Fruits are gathered in every part of 
Egypt; they are pounded and mixed with human 
blood, and 7000 jars full are presented before the 
god. 

"Behold the Majesty of Ra, the King of Upper 
and Lower Egypt, comes with the gods, after sailing 
three days, to see these vessels full of beverage, after 
he had ordered the goddess to slay mankind. — Said 
by the Majesty of Ra: 'It is well, this: I shall pro- 
tect men by reason of this.' Said by Ra: 'I raise 
my hand on this account, to swear that I will no 
more slay men.' 

"The Majesty of Ra, the King of Upper and 
Lower Egypt, gave orders in the middle of the 
night to empty the liquid of the vessels, and the 
fields were completely filled with water, by the will 



The Deluge, 449 

of this god. The goddess arrived in the morning, 
and found the fields full of water; her face was joy- 
ous therefor, and she drank in abundance, and she 
departed satiated. She perceived no more men. 

" Said by the Majesty of Ra to this goddess : 
' Come in peace, gracious goddess.' — And he caused 
the young priestesses of Amu (the Libyan norae) to 
be born. — Said by the Majesty of Ra to the goddess : 
' Libations shall be made to him at each of the feasts 
of the new year, under the direction of my priest- 
esses/ — Hence it comes that libations are made under , 
the direction of the priestesses of Hat'hor by all men 
even since those ancient days." 

Nevertheless, some men escaped the destruction 
which Ra had commanded ; they renewed the popu- 
lation on the face of the earth. As for the solar god 
who reigns over the world, he feels himself old, sick, 
weary; he has had enough of living among men, 
whom he regrets not having completely exterminated, 
but whom he has sworn to spare henceforward. 

" Said by the Majesty of Ra : e There is a sharp 
pain which torments me ; what is it that hurts me ? ' 
Said by the Majesty of Ra : ' I am alive, but my 
heart is tired of being with them (men), and I have 
nowise destroyed them. That was not a destruction 
which I myself carried out/ 

"Said by the gods who accompany him : f Away 
with thy lassitude ; thou hast obtained all that thou 
hast desired.' " 

The god Ra decides, however, to accept the help 
of the new race of men, which is offered him to fight 
against his enemies; and they engage in a great 
29 



450 The Beginnings of History. 

battle, whence they come out victors. But, in spite 
of this success, the god, disgusted with the life on 
earth, resolves to quit it forever, and causes himself 
to be carried to heaven by the goddess Nut, under 
the form of a cow. There he creates a place of de- 
lights, the fields of Aalu, the Elysium of Egyptian 
mythology, which he peoples with stars. Entering 
into rest, he assigns to the different gods the govern- 
ment of the different parts of the world. Shu, 
who is to succeed him as king, will administer the 
affairs of heaven with Nut; Seb and Nun receive 
the guardianship of the creatures of the earth and 
the water. Finally, Ra, as a sovereign voluntarily 
descending from his seat of power, a genuine abdi- 
cation, goes to make his dwelling with Tahut, his 
favorite son, to whom he gives the direction of the 
lower world. 

Such is this strange history, "in which," as Na- 
ville has well said, " in the midst of fantastic and 
often puerile inventions, we find, nevertheless, the 
two terms of existence as understood by the ancient 
Egyptians. Ra begins with the earth, and, passing 
through heaven, stops in the region of the deep, the 
Ament, in which he seems to wish to dwell. This 
is, then, a symbolic and religious representation of 
life, which for every Egyptian, and above all for a 
conquering king, must begin and end like the Sun. 
This explains why this chapter should be inscribed 
within a tomb." 

It is the last part of the narrative, which we have 
confined ourselves to summarizing very briefly, with 
its history of the abdication of Ra, and of his retire- 



The Deluge. 451 

ment, at first into heaven, afterwards into the Anient, 
symbolizing death, which must be followed by a 
resurrection, in like manner as the sun issues forth 
again from darkness, that gives it its whole interest 
for the religious teaching about the future state, 
which is unfolded in the decoration of the interior 
walls of the tomb of Seti I. For us, however, on 
account of the present subject of study, the im- 
portance of the record lies in the episode with 
which it opens, being the destruction of primitive 
men by the gods, of which hitherto no mention has 
anywhere else been found. Although the method of 
destruction employed by Ra against men be alto- 
gether different, though he does not work by means 
of a submersion, but by a massacre, his executioner 
being the goddess Tefnut, or Sekhet, the lion- 
headed, Hat'hor's form of terror, this account pre- 
sents in every other respect a sufficiently striking 
analogy with that of the Mosaic or Chaldsean 
Deluge to admit of a comparison, and make it pro- 
bable that this is the same tradition which in Egypt 
assumes a peculiar and excessively individual garb. 
On both hands, in fact, we have the same idea of 
the corruption of mankind exciting the divine anger; 
this corruption, in either case, is punished by the 
extermination of mankind, agreed upon in heaven, 
a punishment which differs only in its form, but from 
which, whatever shape the tradition assumes, only a 
very small number of individuals escape, from whom 
a new human race is destined to issue. As a climax, 
the destruction of men being accomplished, the celes- 
tial anger is entirely appeased by means of an expi- 



452 The Beginnings of History. 

atory sacrifice, and a solemn compact is concluded 
between the divinity and the new human race, the 
former taking an oath never again to destroy man- 
kind. The agreement of all these essential charac- 
teristics seems to me to outweigh the divergence 
in the means used to exterminate primitive man. 
And, furthermore, it is well to note in this connec- 
tion the curious resemblance of the part assigned 
by the Egyptian narrator to Ra, and the character 
ascribed in the Epopee of Uruk to the god Bel, 
in Hasisatra's deluge. "The Egyptians," says the 
Abbe Vigouroux,^) "had retained the tradition of 
the destruction of mankind; but as an inundation 
was for them a synonym of prosperity and life, they 
altered the primitive tradition; the human species, 
instead of perishing by water, was otherwise exter- 
minated, and the inundation, as a benefaction to the 
Nile Valley, became in their eyes the sign of the 
pacifying of Ra's indignation." 

"It is a fact altogether worthy of notice," says 
Maury,( 2 ) "that in America we meet with traditions 
relating to the deluge infinitely more like that of 
the Bible and of the Chaldean religion than among 
vj any nation of the Old World. It is difficult to con- 
ceive that traditions of this kind should have been 
carried thither with the migrations which undoubt- 
edly were made from Asia to North America by way 
of the Kurile or Aleutian Islands, and which in fact 
continue to our day, because there is not a trace of 
them to be found among the Mongolian and Siberian 

( x ) La Bible et les decouvertes modcrnes, 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 219. 
( 2 ) Article Deluge, in the Eiicyclopedie nouvelle. 



The Deluge. 453 

tribes ( l ) which have been mingled with the autoch- 

( x ) Nevertheless, the deluge occupies an important place in the 
cosmogonic traditions of a remarkably original character, which 
Reguly collected among the Voguls. See Lucien Adam, in the 
Revue de philologie et d' eihnographie, vol. I., p. 12 et seq. The 
event is thus related : 

"After seven years of drought, the great woman said to the 
great man: 'It has rained elsewhere; how shall we save our- 
selves? The other giants have assembled in a burgh to take 
counsel together. What shall we do ? ' 

" The great man answered : ' Let us cut a poplar tree in half, 
hollow it and make of it two boats. We will then twist a rope 
five hundred fathoms long out of willow roots, and bury one end 
in the earth, and fasten the other to the prows of our boats. The 
man who has children shall go on board the boat with what be- 
longs to him, and over them shall be placed a covering made of 
skins of oxen ; victuals shall be prepared for seven days and 
seven nights, and be placed beneath the covering. When all is 
done, we will find room in each boat for vessels filled with liquid 
butter.' 

"After having thus assured their own safety, the two giants 
traversed the villages and entreated the inhabitants to build 
boats and twist ropes. Some did not know how to go about it, 
and to such the giants gave the necessary instructions. Others 
preferred to seek a spot where they could take refuge ; but they 
sought in vain, and the great man to whom they applied, because 
he was their elder, declared that he knew of no place of refuge 
vast enough to be a safe place for the people. ' Behold now,' he 
added, ' we are about to be overtaken by the holy water, for 
already for two days past we have heard the roar of its waves. 
Let us enter the boats without delay.' 

"The earth was soon submerged. Those who had not built 
boats perished in the warm water, and the same thing happened 
to the owners of boats whose rope was too short, as well as to 
those who had not supplied themselves with melted butter, to 
ease the play of the rope against the sides of the boat. 

"The water began to fall on the seventh day, and before long 
the survivors set foot upon those portions of the ground which 
had emerged. But, alas ! there were no longer upon the surface 



454 The Beginnings of History. 

thonous races of the New World Undoubt- 
edly certain nations of America, such as the Mexi- 
cans and Peruvians, had already reached a very 
advanced social condition at the period of their con- 
quest; but this civilization has a character peculiar 
to itself, and appears to have been developed upon 
the soil where it flourished. Several very simple 
inventions — as, for instance, the balance^) — were 
unknown to these nations, and this fact proves that 
they did not acquire their knowledge from India or 
Japan. The attempts that have been made to dis- 
cover in Asia, in the Buddhist society, the beginnings 
of Mexican civilization, have not so far led to any 
satisfactory issue. Moreover, had Buddhism, as seems 
very doubtful, penetrated to America, it could hardly 
have brought with it a myth which does not appear 
in its own books.( 2 ) The reason of the similarity of 
the diluvian traditions of the New World aborigines 

of the earth either trees or plants ; the animals had perished ; the 
fishes even had disappeared. Being on the verge of dying of 
hunger, men supplicated the great god Numi-tarom to create anew 
fishes, animals, trees and plants. And their prayer was granted." 

A diluvian narrative has also been discovered among the Eleuts 
\j or Kalmuks, whither it seems to have penetrated along with 
Buddhism : Malte-Brun, Precis de Geographic, book cxxxvii. [Ed. 
Huot, 1841.— Ed. 1810-29, book lx. Tr.] 

(!) We might also add the knowledge of an artificial light of 
any sort whatever for use during the night. 

( 2 ) It should, however, be remarked that the Buddhist mission- 
aries appear to have introduced the diluvian tradition of India 
into China. Gutzlaff ( On Buddhism in China, in the Journal of the 
Royal Asiatic Society, 1st series, vol. XVI., p. 79 [1856] ) affirms 
that he has seen the chief episode represented in a very fine 
painting in a temple of the goddess Kuan-yin. 



The Deluge. 455 

with the Biblical tradition still remains an unex- 
plained fact." I am glad to quote these words of a 
man whose erudition is immense, for the very reason 
that he does not belong to the ranks of Catholic 
writers, and therefore will not be suspected of having 
allowed a preconceived opinion to get the better of 
his judgment. Others, besides, no less rationalistic 
than himself, have pointed out this same affinity 
of the American tradition relating to the deluge 
with the Biblical and Chaldaean records^ 1 ) 

The most important of the American legends of 
the deluge are those of Mexico, because they appear 
to have existed in a definitely fixed form in sym- 
bolic and mnemonic paintings before there was any 
contact between the aborigines and the Europeans. 
According to these documents, the Noah of the 
Mexican cataclysm is Coxcox, called by certain tribes 
Teocipactli, or Tezpi. He is supposed to have been 
saved with his wife, Xochiquetzal, in a bark, or, ac- 
cording to other traditions, on a raft of bald cypress 
wood (Cupressus dislicha). Certain paintings por- 
traying Coxcox's deluge have been discovered among 
the Aztecs, the Miztecs, the Zapotecs, the Tiascaltecs 
and the Mechoacanesians. The tradition of these last 
especially presents a more striking conformity with 
the accounts in Genesis and the Chaldsean sources 
than any of the others. The story as told in them 
may be given thus : Tezpi embarked on a capacious 

( l ) Kanne, Biblische Untersuchungen, vol. I., p. 48 et seq. ; Pust- 
kuclien, Urgeschichte, vol. I., p. 287 et seq. ; Rosenmiiller, Altes 
und Neues Morgenland, vol. I., p. 33 et seq. ; Knobel, Die Genesis, 
2d Ed., p. 76. [But see 3d Ed., by Dillmann, p. 149. Tk.] 



VJ 



456 The Beginnings of History. 

vessel with his wife, his children, some animals and 
different kinds of grain, the preservation of which 
was necessary to the subsistence of the human species. 
When the great god Tezcatlipoca commanded that 
the waters should retreat, Tezpi sent a vulture forth 
from the vessel. The bird, which feeds on carrion, 
did not return, owing to the great number of corpses 
strewed over the recently emerged land. Tezpi sent 
out other birds, among which the humming-bird 
alone returned, holding in his beak a branch of 
foliage. Then Tezpi, seeing that the ground was 
beginning to be covered with fresh verdure, aban- 
doned his ship upon the mountain of Colhuacan.f 1 ) 

The most valuable document on the subject of the 
cosmogonic system of the Mexicans is that designated 
by the name of Codex Vatiaanus, after the Vatican 
Library, where it is preserved. It contains four sym- 
bolic pictures, summing up the four ages of the 
world preceding the present age. They were copied 
at Cholula from a manuscript anterior in date to the 
Conquest, and accompanied by an explanatory com- 
mentary by Pedro de los Bios, a Dominican monk, 
who, in 1566, less than fifty years after the arrival 
of Cortez, gave himself up to the investigation of 
aboriginal tradition, as being a study necessary in 
connection with his labors as a missionary. 

(!) A. von Humboldt, Vues des Cordilieres et monuments des peu- 
ples indigenes de V Amerique, vol. II., p. 177 et seq. [ed. Paris, 
fol., 1810, pp. 226-227 ; Eng. Trans., 1814, II., p. 64 et seq. Tr.] ; 
Clavigero, Storia Antica del Messico, vol. III., p. 151 [Eng. Trans., 
2d Ed., 1807, II., p. 204. Tr.] ; MacCulloch, Researches, Philo- 
sophical and Antiquarian, concerning the Aboriginal History of 
America, p. 262 et seq. 



The Deluge. 457 

The first age is marked thereupon by the figures 
13 X 400 4- 6 or 5206, which Alexander von Hum- 
boldt understands as giving the number of years of* 
the period, and the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg as 
the date of its beginning, according to a proleptic 
era, reckoned backward from the epoch of the execu- 
tion of the manuscript. This age is called Tlatonatiuh, 
"sun of earth. " It is that of the giants, or Quinames, 
the first inhabitants of Anahuac, who were finally 
destroyed by famine. 

The figures of the second age are 12 X 400 + 4 or 
4804, its name being Tletonatiuh, " sun of fire." It 
comes to an end with the descent upon the earth of 
Xiuhteuctli, the god of the fiery element. Human 
beings are all transformed into birds, and only thus 
escape the conflagration; nevertheless, one human 
pair find shelter in a cavern, and they repeople the 
universe after this calamity. 

The figures of the third age, or Ehecatonatiuh, 
"sun of wind," are 10X400+10 or 4010. The 
catastrophe with which it terminates is a terrible 
hurricane, set in .motion by Quetzalcohuatl, the god 
of the air. With very few exceptions, human beings 
are metamorphosed into monkeys during this hur- 
ricane. 

Immediately thereupon follows the fourth age, 
called Atonatiuh, "sun of water," the figures of 
which are 10 X 400 + 8 or 4008. It ends with a 
great inundation, a real deluge. All men are changed 
into fishes, excepting only one individual and his 
wife, who escape in a boat made out of the trunk of 
a bald cypress. The figurative picture represents 



458 The Beginnings of History. 

Matlaleueye, goddess of the waters and companion 
of Tla'loc, the god of the rain, hurling themselves 
'down toward the earth. Coxcox and Xochiquetzal, 
the two human beings preserved from the disaster, 
appear seated upon a tree-trunk, which floats upon 
the waters. ( x ) This deluge is represented as the last 
cataclysm which has agitated the face of the earth. 

All this seems of serious import, and a mind of 
the order of Alexander von Humboldt's unhesitat- 
ingly recognizes its superior value, although Girard 
de Eialle's late verdict is to this effect :( 2 ) 

" The myth of the deluge has been found to exist 
in many of the American countries, and Christian 
authors have promptly discovered in it a reference 
to the Biblical tradition ; they have even found traces 
of the history of the Tower of Babel,( 3 ) in connection 
with the Pyramid of Cholula. We will not waste 
time in demonstrating the process of making out of a 
fish-god, Coxcox among the Chichimecs, Teocipactli 
among the Aztecs, and out of a goddess of flowers, 
Xochiquetzal, the Mexican figures of Xoah and his 
wife, adding thereto the story of the ark and the 
dove. It will suffice to say that all these legends, 
with a Biblical air about them, were collected and 
published only at a comparatively recent epoch ;( 4 ) the 

( 1 ) A. von Humboldt, Vues des Cordilieres, vol.. I., p. 114 [ecL 
Paris, fol., 1810, p. 207 and pi. xxvi. ; Eng. Trans., 1814, II., 
23. Tb.] ; H. de Charencey, Chronologie des ages ou soleils, d'apres 
la mythologie mexicaine, pp. 22-31. 

( 2 ) La Mythologie comparee, vol. I., p. 352 et seq. 

( 3 ) We will recur to this point in chapter xiv. 

( 4 ) Published, yes ; collected, no. The date of Pedro de los 
Rios suffices to refute this argument. 



The Deluge. 459 

first chroniclers — themselves needing to be treated 
with much reserve for all their honest naivete — such 
as Sahagun, Mendieta, Olmos, etc., and the Spanish- 
native writers, such as the Tezcucan Ixtlixochit and 
the Tlascaltec Camargo, do not breathe a word of the 
stories, which they would not have failed to publish, 
had they existed in their day. Finally, in Bancroft's 
workf 1 ) may be found a criticism of these legends, 
due to Don Jose* Fernando Ramirez, curator of the 
National Museum of Mexico, who demonstrates with 
incontestable authority that all these tales arose from 
rash or tendency -governed interpretations of ancient 
Mexican paintings, representing nothing more, as he 
believed, than episodes of the migration of the Aztecs 
about the lakes in the centre of the plateau of 
Anahuac." 

I am very much afraid that the tendency-governed 
disposition (since this ugly word, which is not in 
the French language, has been used in this connec- 
tion) does not apply to the writers who are supposed 
to be crushed beneath the epithet of "Christian," 
which, it may be said in passing, would greatly 
surprise some among them. And this disposition, 
when its object is to attack the Bible at any cost, is 
quite as anti-scientific as that which admits every 
kind of argument in uncritical defense of the Sacred 
Books.( 2 ) Doubtless the attributes of Xochiquetzal, 

(!) The Native Races of the Pacific States, vol. III., p. 68 et seq. 

( 2 ) In criticising a little severely a passage of Girard de Kialle's 
book, I do not detract from the merits of the book, which is very- 
erudite, filled with curious and carefully summarized facts, and to 
which I owe much in the compilation of this chapter. 



VJ 



460 The Beginnings of Histoi-y. 

or Macuilxochiquetzal, as goddess of fertilizing rain 
and of vegetation, identical with Chalchihuitlicue 
or Matlalcueye, are well ascertained facts, more 
certain even than the character of the god-fish, 
Coxcox or Teocipactli. But the transformation of 
the gods into heroes is of constant recurrence in 
all polytheisms, and is most frequently associated 
with the kind of unconscious euhemerism invariably 
found among nations in their childhood. Therefore 
there is nothing in that fact to prevent these two 
divine personages, regarded simply as heroes, from 
having been taken as the two survivors of the 
deluge, the ancestors of the new human race. As 
to Don Jose" Fernando Ramirez's theory respecting 
the symbolic pictures supposed to contain a figured 
representation of the diluvian tradition, it is very 
ingenious and very learnedly worked out, but it 
cannot be regarded as so absolutely demonstrated as 
Girard de Rialle makes it out to be. Even sup- 
posing it incontrovertible, the only result would be to 
exclude from the question some of the documents 
that have been brought into it, just as it is pos- 
sible that in the attempt to assimilate native stories 
there may have been some little, almost unconscious, 
forcing of certain points, which the collaters were 
naturally led to connect with Genesis, such as the 
sending of the birds of Tezpi. But the existence 
itself of the diluvian tradition among the various 
nations of Mexico cannot be questioned, for it rests 
upon a complete collection of undoubted testimony, 
which confirms in the most forcible manner the inter- 
pretation hitherto accepted of the Codex Vaticanus. 



The Deluge. 461 

The valuable work compiled by a native, since 
the Spanish conquest, in the Aztec language and in 
Latin characters, called by the Abbe Brasseur de 
Bourbourg Codex Chimalpopoca, of which he gives 
the analysis and the partial introduction in the first 
volume of his Histoire des Nations civilisees du 
Mexique, contains in its third part a history of the 
Suns, or of the successive ages in the existence of 
the world. The name of each age refers to the mode 
of the destruction of mankind at the termination of 
that particular period. Hence the first is the age of 
jaguars, since they devoured the primitive giants;^) 
the second is the age of the wind, and when that 
came to an end il men lost themselves, carried away 
as they were by the wind; and they were trans- 
formed into apes. The houses, the woods, all were 
carried off by the wind." After that conies the age 
of fire, the sun of which is called Tlalocan-Teuctli, 
"Lord of the lower regions," the customary appel- 
lation of Mictlanteuctli, the Mexican Pluto, which 
appears to indicate the notion of an age of quite 
special volcanic activity. Mankind at the end of 
this epoch is destroyed by a rain of fire, and such 
as are not burned escape only by being transformed 
into birds. To conclude, the fourth age is that of 
water, immediately preceding the existing epoch, and 
ending with the deluge. 

Here follows the textual account of the cataclysm, 
according to the translation of the Abbe Brasseur, 
which is considered exact among Americanists : 

(*) By a curious alteration of the text, it is said that the 
jaguars "were devoured," instead of saying "they devoured." 



VJ 



462 The Beginnings of History. 

"This is the sun called Nahui-atl, 'four (of) wa- 
ter.^ 1 ) Now, the water was calm for forty years, plus 
twelve, and men lived for the third and the fourth 
time. When the sun Nahui-atl came, four hundred 
years had gone by, plus two centuries, plus seventy- 
six years. Then all men were lost and drowned, 
and found themselves changed into fishes. The sky 
approached the witter. In a single day everything 
was lost, and the day Nahui-xochitl, ' four (of) flower/ 
consumed all our flesh. 

"And this year was that of Ce-calli, 'one (of) 
house, '( 2 ) and on the day Nahui-atl all was lost. The 
mountains even were plunged beneath the water. And 
the water remained calm during fifty-two spring- 
times. 

" Now, at the end of the year, the god Titlacahuan 
had forewarned Nata and his wife Nena, saying: 
'Make no more wine of agave, but set to work to 
hollow out a great bald cypress, and you shall go 
into it when the water begins to rise toward the sky, 
in the month Tozontli. 

"Then they went into it, and when the god had 
shut the door of it, he said : 'Thou shalt eat but one 
single sheaf of maize, and thy wife one also/ 

"But as soon as they had finished they went out 
of that place; and the water remained calm, for the 
wood no longer stirred it up, and opening it they 
began to see the fishes. 

(!) According to the designation of the day of the year in which 
the final cataclysm was said to have taken place. 

( 2 ) This designation for a year enters into the system of Mexi- 
can cycles, comprising a certain number of groups of years, each 
one characterized by the name of an object or of an animal. 



The Deluge. 463 

" Then they lighted some fire by rubbing pieces of 
wood together, and they broiled some fishes. The 
gods Citlalliuicue and Citlallatonac, looking down- 
ward instantly, said: i Divine lord, what is this fire 
which is made there ? Why do they thus smoke the 

sky?'_ 

" Titlacahuan-Tezcatlipoca immediately came down. 
He began to scold, saying, 'Who has been making 
this fire here?' And seizing the fishes, he moulded 
their bodies and shaped their heads, and they were 
transformed into dogs (chiehime)" 

This last point is a satire directed against the 
Chichimecs or "barbarians of the North," founders 
of the kingdom of Tezcuco. It stamps the narrative 
with a purely aboriginal character, and excludes the 
idea of a Biblical imitation, which the date of its 
redaction might have led one to suspect^ 1 ) 

The manuscript history written in Spanish by 
Motolinia, and dating back to the age of the Con- 
quistadores, is not now known, except through ex- 
tracts given by the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg in 
his Mecherches sur les mines de PalenquS, a work 
containing some very useful documents, although 
interlarded with the visionary ideas with which the 
learned pioneer of American antiquities was so 
strangely carried away toward the end of his career. 
We find here again the theory of the four suns or 
four ages, presented exactly in the same order as by 
the author of the Codex Ckimalpopoca.^ 1 ) 

(*) See, furthermore, in regard to all this account, H. de Cha- 
rencey, Chronologic des ages, ou soleils, pp. 8-18. 

( 2 ) On the system followed by Motolinia, see H. de Charencey, 
same dissertation, pp. 18-22. 



\J 



464 The Beginnings of History. 

The first is called "the age of Tezcatlipoca," be- 
cause that god is said to have added one-half to the 
sun, only half of which gave light, or is said to have 
"made a sun of himself in its stead." During this 
age there lived the Quinames, or giants, who were 
nearly all exterminated by a famine. Following 
upon this last event, Quetzalcohuatl, the god of the 
air, having armed himself with a great stick, beat 
Tezcatlipoca with it, threw him into the water, and 
in his turn "made a sun of himself in his stead." 
The deposed god, having transformed himself into a 
jaguar, went about devouring all the Quinames who 
had escaped famine. The records of the Codex Vati- 
canus and the Codex Chimalpopoea, regarding the 
catastrophe which brought the first age of the world 
to an end, are reconciled by means of this third nar- 
rative. 

Motolinia proceeds to make the second and third 
ages those of wind and of fire, ending with the de- 
structions with which we are already acquainted. 
The fourth age is that of the "sun of the water," 
placed under the patronage of the goddess Chalchi- 
huitlicue. The deluge of waters put an end to this, 
and after this last of the cataclysms the present age 
begins^ 1 ) 

We will now turn to the records of the History of 
the Chichimeeas, by Don Fernando d'Alva Ixtlil- 

(!) Motolinia is so little concerned about finding a similarity 
between the Biblical and Mexican deluges that he places the last- 
named in the year 68 B. C, in consequence of native cyclical 
computations which were incapable of rising above comparatively 
feeble numbers, after leaving the epoch which included authentic 
history for the inhabitants of Anahuac. 



The Deluge. 465 

xochitl, a descendant of the ancient pagan kings of 
Tezcuco, whose supposed silence, as we have but just 
now seen, was quoted as a proof against the authen- 
ticity of the diluvian tradition of Mexico. In the 
first chapter of his first book^ 1 ) Ixtlilxochitl tells 
the story of the cosmic ages according to the tradi- 
tions of his native city. He allows only four of 
these, including the present epoch. According to 
him, the first of all is the Atonatiuh, or "sun of the 
waters," which begins with the creation and ends 
with a universal deluge. Thereupon follows the 
■ Tlachitonatiuh, or "sun of earth," the second age, 
Avhen the giants, Called Quinametzin-Tzocuilhioxime, 
live, descended from the few survivors of the first 
epoch. A tremendous earthquake, which crumbles 
the mountains and destroys the greater part of the 
inhabitants of the earth, ends this age. During the 
third age, Ehecatonatiuh, " sun of wind," the Olmecs 
and the Xicalancs come from the East to settle in 
the South of Mexico. Enslaved at first by the re- 
maining Quinames, they end by massacring them. 
Quetalcohuatl then appears as a religious reformer, 
but is not listened to by mankind, whose indocility 
is chastised by the frightful hurricane in consequence 
of which those who do not perish become apes.( 2 ) 

( x ) Ternaux Compans, Voyages, relations et memoires sur V Ame- 
rique, vol. XII., p. 1 et seq. 

(2) There is a curious resemblance "between this story thus pre- 
sented and the account of the miraculous destruction of the 
mythical people of 'Ad in the Arab legends. 

"The arrogance and impiety of the 'Adites had reached the 
last pitch ; God raised up among them a prophet named Hud, 
who appeared during the reign of a certain Khuldjan. During 
30 



\J 



466 The Beginnings of History. 

After this new catastrophe the age now in progress 
opens, called Tlatonatiuh or "sun of fire," because 
it is destined to end with a rain of fire. Thus it 
may be seen that Ixtlilxochitl is perfectly well ac- 
quainted with the diluvian tradition, and if he does 
not enter into the details of it, he at least assigns to 
it an important place in his picture of the successive 
ages of the world. 

We are constrained to admit, in accordance with 
the authorities which we have passed in review, that 
the tradition of the delete among; the various nations 
of Mexico is genuine and thoroughly indigenous ; it 

the fifty years that his mission lasted, Hud in vain tried to bring 
his brothers to the knowledge of the one God. Then a horrible 
drought afflicted the land. The 'Adites sent three of their num- 
ber to the valley of Mecca, which was even then a spot held in 
veneration, to offer sacrifices and to ask for rain from heaven. 

" Some of the Amaliqa, allied by blood to the 'Adites, inhabited 
this valley. They received the envoys like kinsfolk, and one of 
the strangers led victims to the top of a mountain and immo- 
lated them. Immediately three clouds appeared over his head, 
and a celestial voice cried to him : ' Choose for thy nation which- 
ever thou wouldst have.' He chose the largest and blackest, 
thinking that it was surcharged with rain. On the instant the 
cloud set out, directing its course toward the country of the 
'Adites. From its bosom came forth a terrible hurricane, which 
destroyed every one, with the exception of the small number of 
those who had yielded to the counsels of Hud and renounced 
idolatry. Of the three envoys, the one who had sacrificed was 
likewise struck with death ; the other two were spared, because 
they had believed the word of Hud." (Caussin de Perceval, Essai 
sur Vhistoire des Arabes avant F Islamisme, vol. I., p. 15.) 

" We sent against the people of 'Ad," says Allah, in the Qoran 
(liv., 19, 20; cf. li., 41, 42; lxix., 6, 7), "a violent wind, on an 
ill-omened day, — a wind blowing ceaselessly. And it swept the 
men away like the trunks of palm trees violently uprooted." 



The Deluge. 467 

is by no means an invention of the missionaries, as 
has been insinuated. Doubts might be raised with 
so much the more reason in regard to certain details 
in some of its versions, especially as having a connec- 
tion with preconceived ideas, because they appear to 
be too exact and too much like Genesis. But as for 
the fundamental tradition, that is unassailable, and 
it comes to us intimately associated with a conception 
which has not been drawn from the Bible, the 
genuineness of which Bancroft and Girard de Ri- 
alle^) do not dream of touching, and that is the 
idea of the four ages of the world. ( 2 ) This concep- 
tion presents a singular analogy with that of the 
four ages, or yugas, of India, and that of the man- 
vantaras, in which the destructions and renewals of 
the human race alternate, an analogy which Hum- 
boldt/ 3 ) MacCulloch,( 4 ) and Maury ( 5 ) considered 
very significant. It is of such a nature that we are 
justified in inquiring whether it were possible that 
the Mexicans of themselves could have produced a 
conception, in an entirely independent manner, so 
exactly parallel to that of the Hindus, or whether 

(!) La Mythologie comparee, vol. I., p. 352. 

( 2 ) See H. de Charencey's dissertation, Chronologie des cigcs ou 
soleils d'apres la mythologie mexicaine, Caen, 1878. 

(3) Vues des Cordilieres, vol. I., p. 337; vol. IT., pp. 118, 140 
and 168. [Ed. Paris, fol., 1810, p. 203 et seq. ; Eng. Trans., 
1814, II., p. 16 et seq. Tr.] 

( 4 ) Researches, Philosophical and Antiquarian, concerning the 
Aboriginal History of America, p. 260 et seq. 

( 5 ) Articles Ages and Deluge, in the Encyclopedic nouvelle. See 
further G. D'Eichthal, Revue Archeologique, new series, vol. XL, 
pp. 44 and 290. 



\J 



468 The Beginnings of History. 

they may not have received it from India through a 
more or less direct channel. The tradition of the 
deluge, and the system of the four ages from which 
this tradition is inseparable in Mexico, place us then 
face to face with the problem to which one irresisti- 
bly recurs, when the question of the American civil- 
izations arises, the problem of the originality, more 
or less complete and more or less spontaneous, of 
these civilizations, and of the additions which may 
have been made to them by Buddhist missionaries 
or others from Asia, at some epoch. In the present 
state of knowledge, it is as impossible to solve this 
problem negatively as affirmatively, and all the 
attempts now being made to understand it are much 
too premature and cannot lead to any solid result. 
Before attempting to find out the origin of the Ame- 
rican civilizations, it will be necessary to know 
thoroughly what they were; before attacking the 
arduous and obscure problems of their beginnings, it 
is needful to construct a well-planned American 
archaeology on the same scientific bases and after the 
same methods as other archaeologies, and it is on this 
point that J. G. Muller and Hubert Bancroft seem to 
me so far in advance of all their predecessors in this 
branch of study. 

For the time being, nothing more can be done 
than to determine the facts, as I have attempted to 
do, in the matter of the account of the deluge, with- 
out attempting to deduce therefrom hasty and am- 
bitious conclusions. To-day I cannot express myself 
with the same confidence that I did eight years ago, 
to this effect : " The Mexican accounts of the deluge 



The Deluge. 469 

prove conclusively that the diluvian tradition is one 
of the oldest in human records, a tradition so primi- 
tive that it dates back prior to the dispersion of the 
human family and the first developments of material 
civilization, and the red race which peopled America 
brought it from the common cradle of our kind to 
its new habitations, at the same time that the Semites, 
Chaldseans and Aryans carried it with them to the 
lands of their adoption."^) The truth is, this tradi- 
tion of the deluge is perhaps not really so primitive 
with the American nations. We can state positively 
that it was not borrowed from the Bible after the 
advent of the Spaniards ; but we are unable to affirm 
with equal certainty that it may not have been, to- 
gether with the belief in the four ages of the world, 
the fruit of a foreign importation at an earlier epoch, 
whose date and point of departure it would be at 
present impossible to determine. 

However that may be, the doctrine of the succes- 
sive ages, and the destruction of the men of the first 
of these ages by a deluge, appears in the curious 
book of the Popol-vuh, a collection of mythological 
traditions of the aborigines of Guatemala, edited in 
the Quiche language, after the conquest, by a secret 
adept of the ancient religion, discovered, copied, and 
translated into Spanish in the beginning of the 
last century by the Dominican Francisco Ximenez, 
pastor of Saint-Thomas de Chuila. His Spanish 
version has been published by Schelzer,( 2 ) and the 

( 1 ) Essai de commentaire des fragments de Berose, p. 283. 

( 2 ) R. P. F. Francisco Ximenez, Las historias del origen de los 
Jndios de esta provincia de Guatemala, traducidas de la lengua quiche 



\J 



470 The Beginnings of History. 

Quiche text with a French translation by the Abbe 
Brasseur de Bourbourg^ 1 ) It is stated therein that 
after the creation the gods, having seen that animals 
were capable neither of speaking nor of worshiping 
them, wished to form men in their own image. They 
fashioned them at first of clay. But these men were 
without consistency • they could not turn their heads ; 
they talked, but understood nothing. Then the gods 
destroyed their imperfect work by a deluge. Mak- 
ing a second attempt, they produced a man of wood 
and a woman of resin. These creatures were much 
superior to their predecessors ; they moved about and 
lived, but after the fashion of animals ; they talked, 
but not intelligibly, and they did not think about 
the gods. Then Hurakan, " the heart of heaven," 
god of the tempest, caused a rain of burning resin 
to fall on the earth, while simultaneously the ground 
was shaken by a fearful earthquake. All mankind, 
descended from the pair made of wood and resin, 
perished, with the exception of some few, who became 
apes of the forests. Finally, the gods made four 
perfect men out of white maize and yellow maize, 
viz.: Balam-Quitze, "the smiling Jaguar;" Balam- 
Agab, "the Jaguar of the night;" Mahuentah, "the 
famous name;' 7 and Iqi-Balam, "the Jaguar of the 

al Castellano para mas comodidad de los ministros de S. Evangelio, 
Vienna, 1857. 

(!) Popol-vuh. Le livre sacre et les myihes de V antiquite ameri- 
caine, avec les livres hero'iques et historiques des Quiches. Ouvrage 
original des indigenes de Guatemala, texte quiche et traduction francaise 
en regard, accompagnee de notes philologiqucs et d'un commentaire sur 
la mythologie et les migrations des peuples anciens de V Ameriqiie, 
Paris, 1861. 



The Deluge. 471 

moon." They were large and strong; they saw 
everything and knew everything, and they gave 
thanks to the gods. But the latter were alarmed at 
the complete success of their work, and feared for 
their own supremacy ; therefore they threw a light 
veil, like a mist, across the eyes of these four men, 
so that they became like the men who now live. 
While they were asleep, the gods created four wives 
of great beauty for them, and of three of these pairs 
were born the Quiches, Iqi-Balam and his wife, 
Cakixaha, never having had children. This series 
of awkward attempts at creating man on the part of 
the gods, who did not succeed in their design until 
after having been twice obliged to destroy their 
imperfect work, is very far removed from the Bible 
narrative, far enough, indeed, to dissipate any sus- 
picion of influence from the teachings of the Christian 
missionaries upon the native Guatemalan narrative, 
in which we still come upon the belief that a primi- 
tive race of men was destroyed in the beginning of 
time by a great inundation. 

We can prove this also in Nicaragua. Oviedo^) 
tells us that Pedrarias Davila, governor of that 
province, in 1538 commissioned Father Bobadilla, 
of the order of St. Dominic, to make an inquiry into 
the spiritual state of the Indians, whom his prede- 
cessors boasted of having converted in great numbers 
to Catholicism, a fact of which Davila was not with- 
out reason incredulous. The Father interrogated the 
natives, and Oviedo has transmitted to us several dia- 

( 1 ) Historia general y natural de las Indias, 1. xliii., chapters ii. 
and iii. 



472 The Beginnings of History. 

logues of this investigation, which throw some light 
upon the beliefs of the inhabitants of Nicaragua a few 
years after the Spanish conquest. The following 
bears directly upon our subject :(*) 

Q. (Bobadilla.) Who created the heavens and the 
earth, the stars and the moon, man and all the rest? 

A. (the Cacique Avogoaltegoan.) Tamagastad and 
Cippatoval ; one is a man and the other a woman. 

Q. Who created this man and this woman ? 

A. Nobody. On the contrary, all men and all 
women are descended from them. 

Q. Did they create the Christians ? 

A. That I know not; but we Indians are de- 
scended from Tamagastad and Cippatoval. 

Q. Are there other gods greater than they ? 

A. No ; we believe that they are the greatest. 



Q. Are these gods of flesh or of wood, or of quite 
a different substance ? 

A. They are of flesh ; they are man and woman, 
and of a brown color, like us Indians. They walked 
on earth, dressed like us, and they ate what Indians 
\j eat. 

Q. Who gave it to them ? 

A. Everything belongs to them. 

Q. Where are they now ? 

A. In heaven, according to what our ancestors 
have told us. 

Q. How did they get up there ? 

(!) See Girard de Hialle, La Mythologie comparee, vol. I., p. 282 
et seq. 



The Deluge. 473 

A. I only know that it is their dwelling-place. I 
know not how they were born, for they have neither 
father nor mother. 

Q. How do they live now ? 

A. They eat what the Indians eat ; for maize and 
all articles of food come from the place where the 
teotes (gods) live. 

Q. Do you know, or did you ever hear, whether 
the world was ever destroyed after the teotes created it? 

A, Before the present race existed the world was 
destroyed by water, and everything became sea. 

Q. How did this man and woman escape ? 

A. They were in heaven, for they dwelt there, and 
afterwards they descended to earth and re-created 
everything as it now exists, and we are their off- 
spring. 

Q. You say that the world was destroyed by 
water. Were any individuals saved in a canoe or 
in any other fashion ? 

A. No ; all the world was drowned, according to 
what my ancestors tell me. 

The great god, Tamagastad, to whom this dialogue 
refers, is evidently identical with the Thomagata, the 
spirit of fire, of the terrible countenance, whose wor- 
ship preceded that of Botehiea ( l ) among a portion of 
the Muyscas, at Tunja and at Sogamosa. We are 
then carried back to the religious and cosmogonic 
traditions of the very high civilization of the lofty 
plateau of Cundinamarca, and are thus led to recog- 
nize in the diluvian tradition of Botehiea some echo 

(*) Girard de Pdalle, La Mythologie comparee, vol. I., p. 280 
et seq. 



VJ 



474 The Beginnings of History. 

of the wide-spread tradition of the deluge of the pri- 
mitive ages, associated with the remembrance of a local 
event, an extraordinary overflowing of the Funzha 
(now Rio Bogota), from which the ancestors of the 
Muyscas had suffered in the early times of their set- 
tlement in that country. It should not indeed be for- 
gotten that Botch ica and his wicked wife, Huythaca, 
who caused the inundation of Cundinamarca, are 
nothing more than personifications of the sun and 
moon, as are also the pair Manco-Capac and Mama- 
Oello in the empire of the Incas. Girard de Bialle 
makes the following correct observation :(*) " To the 
Peruvian the moon is mild and good ; it aids its 
spouse and brother in his civilizing work; on the 
plateau of Cundinamarca, however, it appears as a 
sorceress, a genuine divinity of night and of evil, 
worthily represented by the melancholy screech-owl." 
Some persons have imagined that the tradition of 
the deluge could be found among the Peruvians ;( 2 ) 
but criticism does away with this notion, which arises 
merely from an unintelligent interpretation and alter- 
ation of the myth of Viracocha or Con, god of the 
waters, or more exactly the personification of the 
humid element, ( 3 ) as shown by the legend which 
depicts him as boneless, yet, nevertheless, spreading 
himself far and wide, levelling the mountains and 

(i) Vol. I., p. 277. 

( 2 ) Ulloa, Memoir es sur la decouverte de V Amerique, trad. Ville- 
Tbrune, vol. II., p. 846 et seq. ; MacCulloch, Researches, Philoso- 
phical and Antiquarian, concerning the Aboriginal History of America, 
pp. 397-402. 

( 3 ) Girard de Rialle, La Mythologie comparee, vol. I., pp. 41, 
25G et seq. 



The Deluge. 475 

filling up the valleys in his progress^ 1 ) He was the 
great god of the Aymaras, who, according to them, 
created the sun, and, issuing from Lake Titicaca to 
manifest himself upon the earth, gathered together 
the first men at Tiahuanaco.( 2 ) Later on, the official 
cosmogony of the Incas subjected him to an euhe- 
meristic transformation, in order to diminish his re- 
ligious importance, representing him as one of the 
children of the Sun, come to earth to dwell among 
men and civilize them, being a younger brother of 
Manco-Capac.( 3 ) Now, the writers of very late date 
who speak of the deluge make it coincide exactly 
with the reign of Viracocha, though the native record 
of this event is unfamiliar to the Inca Garcilaso de 
La Vega, to Montesinos, to Balboa, to Gomara, 
to P. Oliva, or, in short, to any of those writers 
who are of real authority as witnesses in matters 
regarding Peru. It is true that MacCulloch quotes 
Acosta(*) and Herrera,( 5 ) but these authors say nothing 

(*) Gomara, La historia general de las Indias, chap, xxii., edit, 
of Antwerp, 1544, fol. 159, obv. 

( 2 ) Greg. Garcia, Origen de los Indios de el Nuevo Mundo e Indias 
Occidentals (Valencia, 1607 ; Madrid, 1729), 1. v., ch. vii. 

( 3 ) Garcilaso de La Vega, Primer a parte de los Commentarios reales 
que tratan del origen de los Yncas, reyes que fueron del Peru, de su 
idolatria, leges, y govierno en paz y en guerra, de sus vidas y con- 
quistas, y de todo lo que fue aquel imperio y su republica, antes que los 
Espanoles passaron a el (Lisbon, 1699; Madrid, 1723; reprinted 
at the head of the general edition of 1800), 1. i., chap, xviii. 

( 4 ) Historia natural y moral de las Indias ; en que de tratan las 
cosas notables del cielo y elementos, metales, plantas y animates dellas, 
y los ritos y ceremonias, leges y govierno y guerras de los Indios ; we 
have consulted the Barcelona edition, 1591. 

( 5 ) Historia general de los hechos de los Castellanos en las islas i tier- 



476 The Beginnings of History. 

whatever about mankind having been overwhelmed 
by a deluge ; they merely state that Viracocha gave 
laws to the first men at the end of a primordial 
epoch, anterior to the creation of mankind, when all 
the surface of the earth was covered with water. (*) 

Numerous legends in regard to the great inundation 
of primitive times have been discovered also among 
those American tribes which are still in a state of 
barbarism. But the very nature of these narratives 
leaves room for doubt concerning them. They were 
not embalmed in writing by the aborigines them- 
selves. We know them only through media, who 
may, in perfectly good faith, have altered them con- 
siderably in reporting them, and almost unconsciously 
forced them into a resemblance to the Biblical records. 
Moreover, they were only recently collated, after the 
tribes had been already long in contact with Euro- 
peans, and more than one adventurer living among 
them might easily have introduced some foreign ele- 
ments into their traditions. These narratives would 
hence be of but small value apart from the facts of 
positive authenticity which we have proved to exist 

ra-firme del mar Oceano, Madrid. 1G01-1615 ; Madrid, 1726-1730. 
[Eng. Trans., 1725-1726. Tr.] 

(!) When Avendano (Sermon ix., p. 100, ed. of 1649) says that 
it was believed that after the deluge three eggs fell from heaven, 
one of gold, whence came forth the Curacas or princes ; the other 
of silver, from which spi*ang the nobles, and the third of copper, 
whence issued the people, it is evidently this first aquatic period 
which he improperly designates as the deluge. The account is, 
moreover, of Aymara origin and not Quichua, and previous to the 
Inca period, for the Incas are not included in this original gene- 
alogy of mankind. 



The Deluge. 477 

in Mexico, Guatemala and Nicaragua, which prove 
the fact of diluvian tradition among the peoples of 
America before the arrival of the European conquer- 
ors. With these facts to back them, the stories of 
the deluge among the illiterate tribes of the ISTew 
World deserve to be mentioned, though with the 
reserve which we shall explain. 

The most remarkable of these, as excluding by its 
very form the idea of the communication of the tra- 
dition through the Europeans, is the story told by 
the Cherokees, which seems like a childish version 
of the Hindu narrative, with this difference, that a 
dog is substituted for the fish as the saviour of the 
man who escapes the cataclysm ; but this substitution 
may be traced to a myth peculiar to American soil, 
the transformation of fishes into dogs, which we 
mentioned just now as occurring in the diluvian 
narrative of the Codex Chimalpopoca. 

" The dog," says the legend of the Cherokees, 
" ceased not for several days to run along the banks 
of the river with a singular persistence, looking fix- 
edly at the water, and howling as in distress. His 
master, irritated by these manoeuvres, ordered him 
in a rude voice to return to the house ; then he began 
to speak, and revealed the misfortune which was 
threatening. He ended his prediction by saying that 
his master and family could hope to escape drown- 
ing only by throwing him, the dog, immediately 
into the water, and he would then become their 
saviour ; that he would swim in search of a boat to 
ensure his own safety with those whom he wished to 
help in escaping, but that he had not a moment to 



478 The Beginnings of History. 

lose, for a terrible rain was about to ensue, which 
would produce a geueral inundation, in which all 
would perish. The man obeyed the dog's directions, 
and thus was saved with his family, and from them 
the earth was repeopled."^) 

The Tamanakis, a Carib tribe on the banks of the 
Orinoco, are credited with a diluvian legend, to the 
effect that a man and a woman alone escaped the 
cataclysm by climbing to the summit of Mount 
Tapanacu. There they are said to have thrown 
behind them, over their heads, some cocoa-nuts, from 
which issued a new race of men and women.) 2 ) If 
the report is correct, which we dare not affirm, it 
offers a very curious coincidence with one of the 
essential features of the Hellenic legend of Deuca- 
lion and Pyrrha. 

Russian explorers have ferreted out the existence 
of a childish narrative of the deluge in the Aleutian 
islands, which form the geographical chain between 
Asia and North America, and at the extremity of the 
North-West American coast, among the Koloshes.( 3 ) 
The traveler Henry repeats this tradition, which he 
\J picked up among the Indians of the great lakes : 
"Formerly the father of the Indian tribes dwelt 

( 1 ) Schoolcraft, Notes on the Iroquois, p. 358 et seq. [ed. 1847. 
Tb.] 

( 2 ) Quoted by J. J. Stewart Perowne, in Smith's Dictionary of 
the Bible, article Noah, vol. II., p. 574. [Am. Ed., 1871, III., p. 
2186. Tr.] 

( 3 ) Wenjaminow, Notes upon the Islands in the District of TJna- 
laska (in Russian), St. Petersburg, 1840 ; F. Loewe, Archiv far die 
wissenschaftliche kunde von Russland, 1842, 3d part [vol. II., pp. 
459-495." Tb.]. 



The Deluge. 479 

toward the rising sun. Having been warned in a 
dream that the earth was about to be devastated 
by a deluge, he built a raft, on which he Avas saved, 
with his family and all the animals. In this man- 
ner he floated upon the waters during several months. 
The animals, who could speak then, complained 
loudly, and murmured against him. At last a new 
earth emerged, and he disembarked upon it with all 
the creatures that were with him, who from that time 
henceforth lost the power of speech, as a punishment 
for their complaints against their preserver.^ 1 ) Ac- 
cording to Father Charlevoix,( 2 ) the Canadian tribes, 
and those of the Mississippi Valley, inform us in 
their rude legends that all human beings Avere de- 
stroyed by a flood, and that then the Great Spirit 
changed animals into men in order to repeople the 
earth. We are indebted to J. G. Kohl( 3 ) for the 
Chippewa version, full of strange features, difficult 
to explain, Avhere the man saved from the cataclysm 
is called Menaboshu.( 4 ) He sends out a bird, the 
diver, from his boat in order to discover if the earth 
be dry ; and having once more set foot upon the 
ground ravaged by the waters, he renews the human 
species and becomes the founder of society. Catlin( 5 ) 

( x ) Thatcher, Indian Traits, vol. II., p. 108 et seq. 

( 2 ) Ilistoire et description de la Nouvelle France, Paris, 1744, 
vol. I. [Eng. Trans., New York, 1866-72. Tr.] 

( 3 ) Kitschi-gami oder Erzsehlungen vom Obern-See (Bremen, 
1859), vol. I., p. 324 et seq. ; vol. II., p. 256. 

( 4 ) This reads like a corruption of the Sanskrit Manu Vai- 
vasvata. 

( 5 ) Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Condition of 
the North American Indians, 4th Ed. (London, 1844), vol. I., p. 181. 



\J 



480 The Beginnings of History. 

gathered from the Mandans a narrative, according 
to which the earth was a great tortoise floating 
upon the water, (*) until one day a tribe of white 

(!) The same belief existed among the Lenapes (Heckewelder, 
An Account of the History, Manners and Customs of the Indian Na- 
tions who once inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighboring States, 
1819, p. 246. Revised Edition, Philadelphia, 1876, p. 253. 
This has been compared (G. D'Eickthal, Revue Archeologique, new- 
series, vol. XL, p. 284 et seq.) with the kurmavatara (incarnation 
of the tortoise) of Vishnu, in the mythologic legends of India. 
This incarnation of the god is told in a curious epic narrative, an 
expansion of the Astika-parva of the Mahabhdrata, in which Baron 
Eckstein imagined, perhaps not unreasonably, that he recognized 
an echo of the volcanic cataclysm of primitive ages (Journal Asi- 
atique, fifth series, vol. VI., p. 303 et seq. [1855, Oct.-Nov. Te.]). 
The gods and the genii, their rivals, the Asuras, — who appear 
in no way to differ from them in the beginning of this narrative — 
desire to secure the mysterious beverage which bestows immor- 
tality, amrita or ambrosia. They are to find it in the ocean, for 
the Hindu imagination constantly depicts the ocean as a second 
chaos, a receptacle of all treasures. In order to separate the amrita 
from the other elements with which it is mingled, the gods 
and the Asuras resolve to churn the ocean. They uproot Mount 
Mandara, and carry it into the midst of the waters. But it is 
necessary to prevent the mountain from being completely en- 
gulphed, thus sinking the world. At this point in the ancient 
narrative, Vishnuism brings in the incarnation of the deity 
Vishnu, who watches over the safety of the universe, and who, 
under the form of an enormous tortoise, plunges into the abyss, 
lifts the mountain and sustains it with the entire world upon his 
back. Mount Mandara is entwined in the coils of the huge 
serpent Vasuki, and the Asuras seizing its head, the gods its tail, 
the sacred mountain turns round with their opposing efforts in 
the midst of the sea, "like a block of wood in the hands of the 
turner." The mountain takes fire, and the Asuras are blackened 
by contact with this fire and by the smoke which the serpent 
vomits forth from his jaws, and thus they have remained ever 
since. This churning has the effect, however, of bringing up a 
multitude of treasures from the ocean, besides supernatural 



The Deluge. 481 

men, in digging the ground, pierced through the 
shell of the tortoise, which sank, so that the water 
flowing upon its back drowned all men, with the 
exception of one only, who escaped in a bark ; and, 
when the earth began to re-emerge, he sent out a 
dove, who returned with a green willow branch in 
its beak. Here, again, we find Noah's dove, whose 
counterparts we have seen in the story of Tezpi and 
in that of Menaboshu ; on this occasion the story is 
related exactly as in the Bible. But the genuine 
native origin of this characteristic, and of the whole 
narrative of the deluge among the Mandans, becomes 
more than suspicious, if we take into consideration 
the physical characteristics of this curious tribe on 
the banks of the Missouri, which caused CatlinQ 
to regard it as being of mixed blood, reckoning some 
of the white element in its origin. 

beings, which are complacently enumerated by the legend. 
Finally, Dhanvantari, the physician of the gods, appears, rising 
out of the abyss and carrying the amrita collected in a vase. The 
gods take possession of the precious beverage and divide it among 
themselves, without permitting the Asuras to touch it. 

Then a terrible struggle ensues between the gods and the 
Asuras for the possession of the amrita. The spirits of darkness 
are vanquished and scatter over the world, attempting to make 
themselves masters of it and destroy it, in order to be avenged of 
the gods. A new cataclysm threatens the earth, for one of the 
giants is on the point of submerging it in the waves a second 
time. But at this juncture a new incarnation of Vishnu takes 
place. The god descends, at the prayer of Prithivi, in the form 
of a wild boar, triumphs over the giant, and lifting the earth upon 
his tusks restores it to its equilibrium upon the surface of the 
ocean. This is called the varahavatara, "the incarnation as a wild 
boar." 

(!) Vol. I., p. 93 et seq. 

31 



VJ 



482 The Beginnings of History. 

In one of the songs of the people of New Cali- 
fornia, there was reference to a very remote epoch 
when the sea left its bed and covered the earth. All 
men and animals perished in consequence of this 
deluge, sent by the supreme god, Chinigchinig, with 
the exception of some few who sought refuge upon 
a high mountain which the water did not reach. (*) 
The United States Commissioners, engaged in the 
exploration of the territories of New Mexico at the 
time of their coming into the possession of the great 
American Republic, confirmed the existence of a 
similar tradition among various native tribes of this 
vast country. ( 2 ) Other narratives of the same kind 
have been discovered by other travelers in different 
parts of North America, bearing more or less strik- 
ing resemblance to the Biblical account. But gener- 
ally they are too vaguely told for absolute confidence 
in the details with which their reporters have accom- 
panied them.( 3 ) 

As for Oceanica, one would hardly look for the 
diluvian tradition in the race of Pelagian or Papuan 
negroes, ( 4 ) but rather in the Polynesian race, native 

(*) Duflot de Mofras, Exploration du territoire de V Oregon, vol. 
II., p. 366 et seq. 

( 2 ) Reports of Explorations and Surveys from the Mississippi River 
to the Pacific Ocean (1853-1854), vol. III. [Sen. Doc. 2d Sess. 33d 
Cong., vol. XIII., pt. 3] ; Report on the Indian Tribes, p. 40 et seq. 

( 3 ) On these accounts as a whole, see H. de Charencey, Le 
Deluge d' apres les traditions indiennes de V Amerique du Nord, in 
the twelfth volume of the Revue Orientals et Americaine (or Revue 
Americaine, second series, vol. II.), pp. 88-98 and 310-320. 

( 4 ) Except at Fiji, where the Polynesians were for some time 
settled among the Melanasians, and were only destroyed by the 



The Deluge. 483 

to the Australian archipelagoes^ among whom it is 
found connected with circumstances suggested by 
the tidal waves which are among the most ordinary 
scourges of these islands. The most celebrated nar- 
rative of this kind is that of Tahiti^ 1 ) which has 
been associated with the tradition of the first ages 
more emphatically than any of the others. But this 

latter after having infused into the population an element strongly 
enough marked to make a mixed race of the Fijians, rather than 
a pure black race. 

(*) We give here a translation of the Tahitian text, which was 
written by a native called Mare, as published by Gaussin (Du 
dialecte de Tahiti, de celui des ties Marquises, et, en general, de la 
langue polynesienne, pp. 255-259) : 

"Two men went forth to the open sea to fish with a line : Roo 
was the name of one, Tahoroa of the other. They cast their hook 
into the sea, and the hook caught in the hair of the god Rua- 
hatu. Then they said : ' A fish !' They drew in the line and 
saw that it was a man they had caught by the hair. At the sight 
of the god they sprang to the other side of the canoe and almost 
expired with terror. Ruahatu asked them : ' What does this 
mean ?' The two fishermen answered : ' We came hither to catch 
fish, and we did not know that thou wouldst be taken by our 
hook.' The god said to them then : ' Disentangle my hair,' and 
they did so. Then Ruahatu asked furthermore : ' What are 
your names ? ' They answered : ' Roo and Tahoroa.' Then said 
Ruahatu to them : ' Return to the shore, and tell all men that the 
earth will be covered by the sea and that every one will be de- 
stroyed. To-morrow morning betake yourselves to the large 
island called Toa-marama ; that will be a place of safety for you 
and your children.' 

" Ruahatu caused the sea to rise above the land. Every place 
was covered, and all people perished, excepting Roo, Tahoroa and 
their families." 

A slightly different version has been given, but without the 
original text, by Ellis, in his Polynesian Researches [vol. I., p. 
389 et seq. Tr.], and copied by Rienzi (£' Oceanic, vol. II., p. 737). 



VJ 



484 The Beginnings of History. 

account, like all the rest from the same part of the 
world where traditions of the deluge appear, wears 
the childish garb peculiar to the legends of the 
Polynesian or Kanak peoples; besides which, as 
Maury has justly observed,^) the Tahitian account 
might easily find its explanation in a remembrance 
of one of those tidal waves of such frequent occur- 
rence in Polynesia.( 2 ) The most essential feature in 
all narratives of the deluge, properly so called, is 
lacking. " The island of Toa-marama, upon which, 
according to the Tahitian story, was found a place 
of safety for the fishermen who had excited the anger 
of the water-god, Ruahatu, by casting their hook 
into his hair, bears," says Maury, "no resemblance 
to the ark."( 3 ) It is true that one version of the 
Tahitian legend adds that the two fishermen betook 
themselves to Toa-marama, not only with their fami- 
lies, but with a pig, a dog and a couple of hens, a 
circumstance which bears a close resemblance to the 
entering of the animals into the ark. On the other 
hand, certain features in the Fijian narrative, ( 4 ) no- 

(!) Article Deluge, in the Encyclopedie nouvelle. — This opinion 
is also held by Gaussin. 

( 2 ) See, in regard to these tidal waves, Tessan, in the Voyage 
de la Venus, vol. V., p. 197 et seq. 

( 3 ) Nevertheless, we notice that in the Iranian myth of Yima, 
to which we referred above (p. 429), a square enclosure (vara), 
miraculously preserved during the deluge, takes the place of the 
Biblical ark and the ship of the Chaldeean tradition. 

( 4 ) We give here this narrative as reported by Wilkes in the 
records of the Scientific Exploring Expedition undertaken by the 
United States Government [vol. III., p. 82. Te.], and quoted 
from him by J. J. Stewart Perowne (in Smith's Dictionaiy of the 



The Deluge. 485 

ticeably the statement that for many years after the 
event canoes were kept all ready in case of a repe- 
tition of the disaster, look very much more like a 
reference to a local phenomenon, like a tidal wave, 
than an universal deluge. 

A But if these legends are associated exclusively with 
local catastrophes, it is rather remarkable that they 
should be found to recur almost exactly alike in a 
certain number of widely separated localities, and 
that among the inhabitants of Oceanica they should 
not exist, saving in those places where we meet with, 
or at least find incontrovertible traces of the tem- 
porary sojourn of, a single race, the Polynesian, 
native to the Malay Archipelago, whence its first 
ancestors emigrated only about the fourth century of 
the Christian era, ( l ) at an epoch when gradually, in 

Bible, article Noah, vol. II., p. 573 [Am. Ed., 1871, III., p. 2187. 
Tr.] ) : 

"After the islands had been peopled, a great rain occurred, in 
consequence of which they were submerged. But before the 
highest mountain-tops were covered, two great double canoes 
were seen to appear. In one of them was Rokora, god of the 
carpenters ; on the other, Rokola, his principal workman. They 
collected some men and kept them on board until the waters had 
retreated, after which they landed them again on the island. It 
was said that, in consequence of this, for a long time canoes were 
kept always ready, in case of a new inundation. The individuals 
thus saved, eight in number, had been landed at Mbenga, a place 
where the greatest of their gods is said to have made his first 
appearance. It is owing to this tradition that the chiefs of 
Mbenga ranked all the others, and always assumed the first place 
among the Fijians." 

( x ) See Quatrefage's admirable book on Les Polynesiens et leurs 
migrations, and the seventeenth chapter of his book on L 'esphce 
humaine. 



VJ 



486 The Beginnings of History. 

consequence of the intercourse between India and a 
portion of Malaysia^ 1 ) the narrative of the deluge 
under its Hindu form, more or less corrupted, may 
easily have found its way to the latter country.( 2 ) 
Without venturing, then, to decide this difficult, and 
perhaps altogether insoluble, question either in one 
way or the other, we cannot bring ourselves abso- 
lutely to condemn the opinion of those who, in the 
Polynesian accounts, two specimens of which we have 
already cited, think that they find an echo of the 
diluvian tradition, very faint, indeed, greatly cor- 
rupted, and more than elsewhere hopelessly involved 
with the remembrance of local disasters of a compa- 
ratively recent date. 

The lengthy review of the subject in which we have 
just been engaged leaves us in a position to affirm 
that the account of the deluge is an universal tradition 
in all branches of the human family, with the sole 
exception of the black race. And a tradition every- 
where so exact and so concordant cannot possibly be 

(!) The date of the first settlements of the Brahmanist Hindus 
in Java remains doubtful (see. Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, 
vol. II., p. 1040 et seq. [2d Ed., II., p. 1059 et seq. Tr.] ) ; but 
at the end of the second century B. C. the Greek Iambulus (ap. 
Diod. Sic, II., 57) described with great exactitude, as the writing 
of this island, the Kavi Syllabary, borrowed from India ( Jacquet, 
Nouveau Journal Asiatique, vol. VIII., p. 29 [1831, Juillet] \ Wil- 
helm von Humboldt, Ueber die Kawi-Sprache auf Java, vol. I., p. 
96; Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, vol. II., p. 1059 [2d Ed., 
II., p. 1077. Tr.] ). 

( 2 ) We note, however, that all reference to an account of the 
deluge is absent from the traditional songs of the Maoris of New 
Zealand, collected by Sir George Grey {Polynesian Mythology, 
London, 1855. Tr.]. 



The Deluge. 487 

referred to an imaginary myth. No religious or 
cosmogonic myth possesses this character of univer- 
sality. It must necessarily be the reminiscence of 
an actual and terrible event, which made so powerful 
an impression upon the imaginations of the first 
parents of our species that their descendants could 
never forget it. This cataclysm took place near 
the primitive cradle of mankind, and previous to 
the separation of the families from whom the 
principal races were to descend, for it would be 
altogether contrary to probability and to the laws 
of sound criticism to admit that local phenomena 
exactly similar in character could have been repro- 
duced at so many different points on the globe as 
would enable one to explain these universal tradi- 
tions, or that these traditions should always have 
assumed an identical form, combined with circum- 
stances which need not necessarily have suggested 
themselves to the mind in such a connection. 

We observe, however, that the tradition of the 
deluge is perhaps not primitive in America, but an 
importation ; and that it undoubtedly bears the marks 
of an importation among the occasional populations 
of the yellow race where it is found ;(*) and, finally, 
that its genuine existence in Ocean ica, among the 
Polynesians, is still doubtful. Three great races are 
left, whose assured inheritance it is, who did not 
borrow it from one another, but among whom the 
tradition is incontestably primitive, dating back to 
the most ancient memories of their ancestors. And 

(!) See Bunsen, Christianity and Mankind, vol. IV., p. 121. 



\J 



488 The Beginnings of History. 

these three races are precisely those, and those alone, 
connected by the Bible with the descent from Noah, 
whose ethnic filiation is given in the tenth chapter 
of Genesis. This observation, which it does not seem 
to me possible to regard as of doubtful character, 
gives a singularly exact and historic value to the 
tradition recorded by the sacred book, and as pre- 
sented in its pages, even though it may perhaps 
result in giving it a more restricted signification 
geographically and ethnologically. In our thirteenth 
chapter we shall try to discover whether actually, in 
the minds of the inspired writers of the Bible, the 
Deluge was universal in the proper sense, as it has 
generally been understood. Henceforth, however, 
we need not hesitate to state that the Biblical Deluge, 
far from being a myth, was an actual and historic 
fact, which overwhelmed at the very least the an- 
cestors of the three races of Aryans or Indo-Euro- 
peans, Semites or Syro -Arabians, and Chamites or 
Kushites, in other words, the three great civilized 
races of the ancient world, who constitute the really 
superior type of mankind, before the ancestors of 
these three races were as yet separated, and which 
occurred in that Asiatic country which they inhabited 
conjointly. This view will be still more strongly 
confirmed by the facts we propose to investigate in 
the chapters which will form another part of this 
study, contained in a second volume shortly to make 
its appearance. 



APPENDICES. 



APPENDIX I. 

THE COSMOGONIC NARRATIVES OF THE CHALDiEANS, BABYLO- 
NIANS, ASSYRIANS, AND PHCENICIANS. 



I. 

CHALD^A, BABYLONIA, AND ASSYRIA. 



A. — Narrative cf the Babylonians according to Damascius. 

Among the barbarians, the Babylonians seem to pass over the 
first of all principles in silence, imagining two to begin with, 
Tavthe (Tiamat) and Apason (Apsu), -making Apason the consort 
of Tavthe, whom they called the Mother of the Gods. The issue of 
their union, as they said, was an only son, Moymis (Mummu), who 
seems to me to stand for the visible world, offspring of the first 
two principles, from whom are subsequently produced another 
generation, Dache and Dachos (correct to : Lachme and Lachmos 
= Lahamu and Luhmu). A third follows from the same parents, 
Kissare (Ki-shar) and Assoros (Asshur — Shar), of whom three 
gods are born: Anos (Ana = Arm), Illinos (correct: Illimos, 
Elim — Bel), and Aos (Ea); finally, the son of Aos (Ea) and of 
Davke (Davkina) is Belos (Bel-Marduk), called by them the demi- 
urge. — (Damasc, De prim, princip., 125, p. 884, ed. Kopp.) 

B. — Fragment of a Theogonic Cuneiform Tablet. 
The heaven (is) the god Anu 

The earth — the goddess Anat 

The heavens and the earth (are) Anu and Anat 

489 



VJ 



490 The Beginnings of History. 

Urash and Nin-urash (*) ■ — Anu and Anat 

Shar-gal and Kishar-gal — Anu and Anat 

Eni-shar and Nin-sliar — Anu and Anat 

Du-uru and Da-uru — Anu and Anat 

Luhma and Lahma — Anu and Anat 

Alala and Tillili — Anu and Anat 

Eni-uru-ulla and Nin-uru-ulla — Anu and Anat 

— [Cunelf. Inscrlp. of West. Asia, vol. II., pi. 54, 3, 
obv. ; vol. III., pi. 69, 1, obv.) 

C. — Fragments of a Great Cosmogonic Narration in several Tablets 
or Cantos discovered by George Smith. 

1. Fragment of the Beginning of the First Tablet. 

Text in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archeology, 
vol. IV., pi. 1 at p. 363 ; Fried. Delitzsch, Assyrische Lesestucke, 
2d Ed., p. 78 (B, 1, a). 

Translations by : G. Smith, Ghaldsean Account of Genesis, p. 62 
et seq. [Rev. Ed., p. 57 et seq. Tr.] ; Fried. Delitzsch, G. Smith's 
Chaldseische Genesis, pp. 294-298 ; Oppert, in E. Ledrain's Histoire 
d Israel, vol. I., p. 411 et seq. 

1. enuva ells' la nabu lamamu 
"When above not named the heaven 

2. saplls \irci\tuv suma la zakrat 
below the earth by name not called 

3. apsu va la patu zarusun 

the abyss also without boundaries (was) their generator 

4. mummu-tlamat muallldat gimrisun 

the chaos of the sea she who produced the whole of them 

5. mihcnu istenis ihiqu va 
their waters in one flowed together and 

6. glpara la glccura cuca la sSh 

a flock not was folded a plant not had put forth 

7. enuva Hani la supu manama 
when of the gods not produced any one 

8. suma la zukkuru Mmatav la [simat 
by name not they were named the fate not fixed 

(i) The divine names explained here belong to the Accadian or Sume- 
rian language. 



Appendices. 491 

9. ibbanii va Hani [rabuti 

were formed also the gods great 

10. Lujimu Lahamu yustapu .... 
Luhmu (and) Lahamu were produced 

11. adi irbu ina . 

and they grew in 

12. Assur Ki-sar ibbanu 
Asshur (and) Kishar were formed 

13. yurriku yume . . . 
were prolonged the days . . . 

14. Anuv 

Anu 

15. Assur 

Asshur 

When above the heavens were not yet named, 
and, below, the earth was without a name, 
the limitless abyss (apsu) was their generator 
and the chaotic sea (Mummu-Tlamat) she who produced the whole. 
Their waters flowed together in one, 

no flock of animals was as yet collected, no plant had sprung up. 
When none of the gods had as yet been produced, 
when they were not designated by a name, when no fate was 
as yet [fixed, 

the great gods were then formed, 

Luhmu and Lahamu were produced [first 

and they grew in [solitude. 

Asshur and Kishar were produced [next 

Then] rolled on a long course of days [and 

Anu, [Bel and Ea 

were born] of Asshur and of [Kishar. 

2. Fragment belonging probably to the Third Tablet. 

I reproduce the translation of G. Smith (Chaldsean Account of 
Genesis, p. 67 [Rev. Ed., p. 62. Tr.] ), not having been able to 
verify the text. Mr. Pinches, at my request, was kind enough to 
search, though without success, for the original fragment in the 
British Museum, Smith not having indicated its location. 

When the foundations of the ground of rock [thou didst make] 
the foundation of the ground thou didst call . . . 



492 The Beginnings of History. 



\j 



thou didst beautify the heaven 
to the face of the heaven . . 
thou didst give . . 



3. Fragment belonging probably to the Fourth Tablet. 

Here again I have been obliged to confine myself to a copy of 
G. Smith's translation (Chaldxan Account of Genesis, p. 67 et seq. 
[Rev. Ed., p. 62 et seq. Tr.] ), not being able to compare it with 
the original. Mr. Pinches so far has been unable to find it, owing 
to its locality not being indicated among the collections of the 
British Museum. This circumstance is the more to be regretted 
since this fragment, owing to the special prominence given in it to 
Assyria, is the very one which settles most clearly the peculiarly 
Assyrian character of the cosmogony whence it proceeds. 

The god Assur (Accadian Shar) 

When to the god 

Certainly. I will cover (?) (i) 

from the day that thou 

angry thou didst speak 

Assur his mouth opened and spake to the goddess [Sheruya 
(Accadian Kt-shar) 

" Above the sea which is the seat of 

in front of the firmament ( 2 ) which I have made 

below the place I strengthen it 

that there be made also the dry land( 3 ) for the dwelling of . . 

within it his city may he build and 

When from the earth he raised 

the place lifted up 

above heaven 

the place lifted up 

Assyria, ( 4 ) the temples of the great gods 

his father and his of him 

the god . . . thee and over all which thy hand has made 

(i) This remark seems to have been put into the mouth of the goddess 
Ki-shar, called in Assyrian-Semitic Sheruya, consort of the god Shar, or 
Asshur. 

(2) e-shara. 

( 3 ) Expressed by the ideographic group E.LTJ. 

(*) Expressed by the compound ideograms BAL.BE.KI, on the signifi- 
cation of which see Norris, Assyrian Dictionary, p. 535. 



AjDjjendices. 



493 



.... thee, having over the earth which thy hand has made 

having Assyria which thou hast called its name 

. . . made (?) my hand for ever. . . . 

. . . may they carry 
the place .... any one the work which. . . . 

he rejoiced .... to after 

the gods . 
which in , 
he opened 



4. Fragment of the Fifth Tablet. 

The text in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archseology, 
vol. IV., pi. 2, at p. 363; Friedrich Delitzsch, Assyrische Lese- 
stucke, 2d Ed., p. 78 et seq. (B, 1, b). 

First translation by G. Smith, Chaldsean Account of Genesis, p. 
69 et seq. [Rev. Ed., p. 64 et seq. Tr.] Observations of Fried- 
rich Delitzsch, giving the grammatical interpretation of part of 
the text: G. Smith's Chaldseische Genesis, p. 298 et seq. New trans- 
lation by Oppert, in E. Ledrain's Histoire oV Israel, vol. I., p. 412 
et seq. 



manzazi ina menuti 

the mansions in number 



2. 



issim 

He made excellent 
Hani 
of the gods 
kakkabi 
of the stars 



rabuti 
great 

yutarsunu 
he assigned to them, 



LIT. mast 
the stars of the Great 
[Bear(i) 



yulziz 
he fixed 

3. yuaddi 

he fixed the time 
yu\ni~\arcir 
he settled 

4. sanesrit arhi 
twelve months 

yusziz 
he fixed 



satta 
of the year 



kakkabi 
stars 



eli\sa~\ 
for it 



micrata 
limit 



salsati 
three 



ina menuti 
in number 



Q) I will justify this interpretation in a subsequent work. 



494 The Beginnings of History. 



\j 



5. istu yurni 
from the day 

6. yusarrit 
he determined 

addu 
defining 

7. ana la 
for not 

8. manzaz 
the abodes 

9. ipte 
he opened 

10. sigaru 
the bolt 

11. ina 

in 

12. Nannaru 
Nannar (the moon) 



ha sattu 

on which the year 
manzaz 
the mansions 

riksisun 
their bands 
ebiS anni 

to make omission 
Beli u Ea 
of Bel and of Ea 
va abulli 

also the great gates 

yudannma 
he made strong 
kabadtisa( 2 ) 
his majesty 



yicggi ana ugurati 
begins to the end 

Nibiri ana 

of the planets for 



13. 



yuaddisuvva 



la egu manama 

not to turn aside any 
yukin ittisu 

he fixed with himself ( l ) 
ina $ili kilallan 

in the sides perfectly 
sumela u imna 

to left and to right 
va iltakan elati 

also he made himself steps 

yustepa musa iktipa 

he made to shine to the night he 

[joined 
suknat must 



and he fixed for it the time of the existence of the night 



ana uddu 

for fixing 

14. arhisav la 
monthly without 

yugir 
he determined its form 

15. ina rih arhi 
"In the beginning of the month 

lildti 
of the evening 

16. garni nabata 

by thy horns thou shalt be announcing 
samamu 
of the heaven 



yumi 
the days 

naparkct 
interruption 



va 
also 



ma 
in 



agi\su\ 
its disk 



napahi 
on the appearance 



for 



uddu 
fixing the time 



(!) It is plainly evident from this that the work of organizing the 
heavens, and the determination of the movements of the stars, were 
attributed to the god Anu, for the Chaldajo- Assyrians divided the celes- 
tial vault into three parts, called respectively the abodes of Anu, of Bel, 
and of Ea. 

( 2 ) This appears to be a copyist's error for kabadtilu. 



Appendices. 495 

17. ina yumi sibi aga \tustam\la 

in the day seventh the disk thou shalt be in the act 

[of filling 

18. yupattu lik luthurat mes . . . . u 
they will open surely the obscurity 

19. e\nuva samsu ina isid Mine ina 
when the sun at the foundation of heaven at 

\_agf\ka 
thy rising 

20. . . . usti sutaqcibavva bini agu(t)l 
..... defines the precise limits forms his circle 

21. . . . tar ana harran samsi lutaqrib [ya 

turns toward the path of the sun approach and 

22. . . . tar lu ■ . suthurat samsu lusana 
.... turns surely the obscurity the sun may it change 

23 si(?)ta baH uruhsa( l ) 

goest his path 

(24.) suriba va dina dinu 

...... . set thou also bylaw ordained" 

Excellently he made the mansions [twelve] in number for the 
great gods.( 2 ) 

He assigned to them stars and he established fixedly the stars 
of the Great Bear. 

He fixed the time of the year and determined its limits. 

For each of the twelve months he fixed three stars, 

from the day when the year begins until its end.( 3 ) 

He determined the mansions of the planets to define their 
orbits by a fixed time, 

so that none of them may fall short, and none be turned aside. 



( 1 ) Here seems to be another copyist's error for uruhSu. 

( 2 ) "There are twelve ruling gods above the Counsellor gods, each 
presiding over one of the twelve months of the year and one of the 
twelve signs of the Zodiac." — (Diod. Sic., II., 30 ) 

( 3 ) "Over the course of the five planets are placed, according to the 
Chaldeeans, thirty [six] stars, called the Counsellor gods; half of these 
look toward the places on the surface of the earth; these Counsellors 
inspect everything that happens among men and in heaven at the 
same moment of time. Every ten days one of them is sent as a 
messenger of the stars, from the upper to the lower regions, while 
another quits the region located below the earth in order to ascend to 
those who are above; this movement is exactly defined and continues 
constantly, in a period which does not vary."— (Diod. Sic, II., 30.) 



496 The Beginnings of History. 

He fixed the abodes of Bel and of Ea near his own. 

He opened also perfectly the great gates (of heaven), 

making their bolts solid to right and to left ; 

and in his majesty he made himself steps there. [ l ) 

He made Nannar (the moon) to shine, he joined it to the night, 

and he fixed for it the seasons of its nocturnal phases which 
determine the days. 

For the entire month without interruption he settled what 
should be the form of its disk. 

" In the beginning of the month, when evening begins, 

thy horns will serve for a sign to determine the times of the 
heavens. ( 2 ) 

The seventh day^ 3 ) thou wilt be in the act of filling out thy 
disk, 

but the will [partly] expose its dark side.( 4 ) 

0) These are the steps by which the ascent is made from the gate of 
the East, through which the sun appears in the morning, to the 
uppermost point of heaven, descending thence again to the gate of the 
West, through which the sun vanishes in setting. 

( 2 ) The observation of the new moons was of prime importance 
among primitive nations, and to the very last the Hebrews had 
no other method for determining the beginning of the months (see 
Munk, Palestine p. 183), as is the case with the nomad Arabs of to-day. 
I can affirm, of my own experience, how skillful their practised eye is in 
detecting the almost imperceptible crescent of the new moon as it clears 
the solar disk at the moment of the sun's disappearance below the hori- 
zon; not having accustomed ourselves to it, our eyes are incapable of 
the same close observation. 

( 3 ) In the first quarter. 

( 4 ) In order to understand this description of the lunar phases, it is 
necessary to refer to a passage of Vitruvius (IX., 7, 4) : Berossus,- qui, a 
Chaldceorum civitate sive natione progressus, in Asiam etiam disciplinam pate- 
fecit, ita est professus (lunam) pilam esse ex dimidia parte candentem, reliqva 
habere cceruleo c lore. Quum autem cursum itineris svi peragens subiret orbem 
solis. tunc earn radiis et impetu caloris corripi, convertique candentem propter 
ejus proprietatem liiminis ad lumen. Quum autem ea evocata ad solis orbes supe- 
riora spectet, tunc inferior em partem ejus, quod candens non sit, propter aeris 
similitudinem obscuram videri. Quum ad perpendiculum exstet, ad ejus radios 
totum lumen ad svperiorem speciem retineri et tunc earn vocari primam. Quum 
prceteriens vadit ad orientis cosli partes, relaxari ab impetu solis extremamque 
ejus partem candentice oppido quam tenui linea ad terrain mittere splendorem, 
et ita ex eo earn secundum vocari. Quotidiana autem versationis remissione ter- 
tiam, quartam in dies numerari. Septimo die sol quum sit ad occidentem, luna 
autem inter orientem et occidentem medias cccli teneat regiones, quod dimidia 
parte cceli spatio distet a sole, item dimidiam candentice conversom habere ad 
terram. Inter solem vero et lunam quum distet totum mundi spatium, et luna 



Appendices. 497 

When the sun descends towards the horizon at the moment of 
thy rising,^) 

the limits exactly denned [of thy fulness] form its circle. 
Afterwards] turn, draw near the path of the sun,( 2 ) 

turn, and let the sun change (the side 

where may be seen) thy dark part. 

walk in its path. ( 3 ) 

Rise] and set, subject to the law of this destiny." 

5. Fragment of the Beginning of a Tablet, probably the Seventh. 

Text in Friedrich Delitzsch, Assyrisahe Lesest'dcke, 2d Ed., p. 
79 (B, 1, c). 

Translation by G. Smith, Chaldsean Account of Genesis, p. 76. 
[Rev. Ed., p. 71. Tr.] Observations by Friedrich Delitzsch on 
some of the expressions of the text: G. Smith's Chaldseische Genesis, 
p. 299 et seq. 

1. cnuva Hani ina puhrilunu ibwa 

When the gods in their assembly had created 



2. yubaVsimu . . rumi iqcu\ti 
they made excellent the .... awakened. 

3. yusapu siknat napihti 

they produced creatures living 

4. pul ceri uvav ceri u 
cattle of the field wild beasts of the field and 

nammaMe .... 
creeping things . . . 

5 ana silcnat napisti .... 

...... for the creatures living .... 

orientis orhem soils retrospiciens quum transit ad occidentem, earn quod longius 
absit a radiis remissam, quarta decima die plena rota totius orbis mitere splen- 
dorem, reliquosqne dies descrescentia quotidiana ad perfectionem lunaris mensis 
versationibus et cursu, a sole revocationibus subire totam, radiosque ejus men- 
struas dierum efficere rationem. 

In my Choix de Textes Cuneiformes, No. 22, may be found a table of the 
moon's phases, indicating the extent of the bright part of her disk for 
each day of the month. 

0) In the middle of the month, the day of the full moon. 

( 2 ) During the last quarter. 

( 3 ) When the new moon is about to appear. 

32 



VJ 



498 The Beginnings of Histoiy. 

6 put u nammasU all 

.... the cattle and creeping things of the city 
yug d [iru 
they raised 

7 pu~\hri nammalti gimir 

.... the assembly of the creeping things the whole 
nabniti .... 
of the creatures . ... 

8 sa ina puhri kimtiya le . . . . 

.... which in the assembly of my family ..... 

9 va . Bel-ini-elli sane 

.... and the Lord of the far-seeing eye two 

guha[buhinu 
caused to be associated 

10 puhri nammalti yultarrihi 

.... the assembly of the creeping things began to move 



The fragments of the four verses following are too mutilated 
to admit of any certain or connected meaning. 

When the gods all together had formed 

they made excellently the awakened. 

They produced the living beings [on the earth, 

the cattle of the fields, the wild animals of the fields, and the 

creeping things [of the fields 

.... for the living beings 

they raised up [for] the cattle and the creeping 

things of the city. 

the assemblage of creeping things, the whole 

of the creatures 

which in the assemblage of my family .... 

.... and the Lord of the clear-seeing eye [Ea] joined them 
together in a pair.( x ) 

all the creeping beasts together began to 

move 



0) This perhaps refers to the creation of the first human pair, of which 
Ea is the special creator, and to a record similar to that of Genesis ii. 19, 
where all the animals pass in review before the man. 



Appendices. 499 

D— Extract from Berossus by Abydenus. 

There was nothing but water in the beginning, and that was 
called the Sea (Tiamat) ; Belos (Bel-Marduk) put an end to this 
state of things, by assigning to everything its place in the world. 
— (Ap. Euseb. Prsepar. evangel., IX., 41 ; Chronic. Armen. [I., 10, 
2], p. 27, ed Mai; Fragment 3 of my edition.) . 

E — Extract from Berossus by Alexander Polyhistor. 

There was a time when all was darkness and water, and from 
the midst thereof issued spontaneously monstrous animals and 
the most peculiar figures : men with two wings, and others with 
four, with two faces or two heads, one of a man, the other of a 
woman, on one body, and with the two sexes together ; men with 
goats' legs and goats' horns, or with horses' hoofs ; others with 
the hinder parts of a horse and the foreparts of a man, like the 
hippocentaurs. There were, besides, human-headed bulls, dogs 
with four bodies and fishes' tails, horses with dogs' heads, animals 
with the head and body of a horse and the tail of a fish, other 
quadrupeds in which all sorts of animal shapes were confused 
together, fishes, reptiles, serpents, and every kind of marvelous 
monster presenting the greatest variety in their shapes, represent- 
ations of which may be seen in the paintings of the temple of 
Belos. (*) A woman, named Omoroca (Um-Uruk, " the mother 
of Uruk"), presided over this creation ; in the Chaldsean language 
she bears the name of Thavatth (Tiamat), signifying in Greek "the 
sea," and she is also identified with the moon. 

Things being in this condition, Belos (Bel-Marduk) came upon 
the scene and cut the woman in half; of the lower part of her 
body he made the earth, and of the upper half the heavens, and 
all the creatures that were in her disappeared. This is a figura- 
tive way of explaining the production of the universe and of 
animated beings from humid matter Belos then cut off his own 
head, and the other gods having kneaded the blood flowing from 
it with the earth, formed men, who by that means were gifted 
with understanding, and made participants of divine thought. 

[Thus it was that] Belos, interpreted by the Greeks as signifying 
Zeus, having divided the darkness, separated the heavens and 

( l ) The famous E-shakil, often mentioned in cuneiform texts, the great 
pyramidal temple of Bel-Marduk at Babylon. 



VJ 



500 The Beginnings of History. 

the earth, and ordered the world ; and all animated beings who 
were not able to endure the action of light perished. Belos, 
seeing that the earth was a desert, though fertile, commanded one 
of the gods to cut off his head, and kneading the blood which 
flowed with earth, he produced men, as well as those animals 
who are able to live in contact with the air. — Then Belos also 
formed the stars, the sun, the moon, and the five planets. — (Ap. 
Syncell., p. 29 ; Euseb., Chronic. Armen. [I., 2, 4], p. 10, ed. Mai ; 
Fragment 1 of my edition.) 

F. — Fragment of an Epic Account of the Combat of Ifarduk 
against Tiamat. 
The text in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archeology, 
vol. IV., pi. 5 and 6, at p. 363; Friedrich Delitzsch, Assyrische 
Lesestilcke, 2d Ed., p. 82 et seq. (B, 1, e). 

Translations by : G. Smith, Chaldsean Account of Genesis, pp. 
95-98 [Rev. Ed., pp. 109-112. Tr.] ; Fox Talbot, Transactions 
of the Soc. of Bill. Archseology, vol. V., pp. 1-21 ; Oppert, in E. 
Ledrain, Histoire oV Israel, vol. L, pp. 418-421. 

It seems very evident to me that we have here the remains of 
a narrative, developed under an epic form, of the cosmogonic 
combat which Berossus simply mentions as having taken place. 
Obverse : 

1 yukinsi 

he established it ... . 

2 ubadda imnasu yusatyz 

the instrument at his right hand he had seized 

3. . . . u ispatuv iduUu ilul 

. . . and the quiver his hand suspended. 

4. is\kun birqa ina panisu 
he made the lightning in front of him 

5. . . , . . va mustafymetu zumursu yumtalli 
.... also impetuous his body filled. 

6. e~\bus va sapara sulvu kirbih 

he made also the cimeter to penetrate into the body 
Tiamat 
of Tiamat. 

7 irbitti sari yusiecbita ana la 

The four winds he kept near him for not 

act rakmila 

to go out his attacks 



Appendices. 



8, 



lutu 
the wind of the south 



iltanu 
the wind of the north 



9. 



10. 



11. 



12. 



13. 



14. 



15. 



16. 



aharru 
the wind of the west. 
idus sapara yultaqriba 

his hand the cimeter placed at the side 
abisu Aniv 

of his father Anu 
ibni imhulla Mra limna 

he created the bad wind the wind hostile 
asamsutuv 
the hurricane 
sari irbitti sari sibitti sdra 

winds four winds seven the wind 

sdra la salme 

the wind without calm 

yusegavva sari %a 

he made to go out also the winds which 

sibitti sun 

seven them 

kirbis Tiamat sudluhu 

in the body of Tiamat (to) carry confusion 
arkiht 
one after another. 

issi va beluv abuba 

He raised also master the whirlwind 
rabd 
great. 

narkabata simat la mafori 

the chariot steady without rival 
irkub 
he mounted 



17. 



501 

ladu 
the wind of 
[the east 



qisti 
of the bow 



mehd 
the waterspout 



muassisa 
devastator 



ibnu 
he had created 



tibu 
rushing 



kakkahu 
his weapon 



qalitta 
which was level 



izziz va 

he held himself firm and 
ilul 
kept together. 
..... la . padd 

.... without wavering 



irbit 
the four 



nagmadi 
reins 



idussa[ x ) 
his hand 



rajtigu muarhissa 

inundator with no compassion 
[for her. 
0) Evidently a copyist's error for iduSSu. 



\J 



502 The Beginnings of History. 



18. 



19. 



20. 



21. 



it\ti 
with 



22. 



sunnasunu nasa 

their sting carrying 
yusapana lamdu 

they swept the knowledge (?) 
ga rasba u tuquntuv 

. . the fury and the battle 

sumela .... ipattu 

to the left .... they open 



imta 
the venom 



U 



23, 



P* 



24. 



feasu 
his , 



25. 



26. 



pulhati 
. the terrors . 
iriasusSu 
he broke it. 
yusardi 
. he added 

panuSsu 
before him 

yukallu 
he shut up. 



va 
and 

iskun 
he made 



The remains of three verses follow, containing only some 
characters at the end ; and then comes a gap, the extent of 
which we are unable to conjecture. 

Reverse : 
Too small a portion of the first ten lines of the fragment 
remains to suggest any connected meaning. We take up the 
text at the point where Marduk, brought face to face with 
Tiamat, addresses her just before engaging in the combat. 



11. 



neti 



12. 



tesse e va 

thou hast flung thyself and 

UmuttiH tuktinni 

. thy hostility thou hast fixed against me. 



13. 



14. 



la sidat 


ummatki 


lulakku 


zumrisunu 


Not prevailing (is) 


thy troup, 


let strike 


their body 


kakh'ki 








thy arms ! 








endivva 


anaka u 


kali 


nibus 


Turn thee about and 


I and 


thou 


we will make 


habna 








a combat." 









Append 



ices. 



503 



15. 



16. 



17. 



18. 



19. 



20. 



21. 



22. 



23. 



24. 



25. 



Tiamat annita ina semisa 

Tiamat this in hearing it 

mahhur itemi yusanni tenia 

at first was stupefied she changed her resolve 

issi va Tiamat Htmuris elita 

examined also Tiamat attentively above 
malmalil idrura isda\la 

completely she fortified her base. 

sipta ittanamdi tct . . . 

an incantation she placed herself .... 
§a tafyazi yukd alusunu 

of the battle she made them raise 



sursis 
strongly 

imanni 
She prepared 
u Hani 

and the gods 
kakkisunu 
their weapons. 
innindu va 

Assailed also 

Marduka 
Marduk 



Tiamat 
Tiamat 



abkal 
the herald 



sasmis 
in combat 
tahazis 
in battle. 
yusparir va 
Drew also 
imhulla 
the bad wind 
yumtassir 
he loosened. 



iddibbu 
they flung themselves ardently 



beluv 

the lord 

gabit 

which takes 



saparasu 
his cimeter 
arkati 
from behind 



tpte va 

Opened also 

imhullu 

the bad wind 

kalam 

to close 

izzuti 

The violence 

28. innitar 



26. 



27. 



pis a Tiamat 

her mouth Tiamat 
yusteriba 
he had made to enter 
saptisa 
her lips. 
sari 
of the wind 
libbasa 



ana 
for 



karsasa 
her stomach 



Hani 
of the gods 



qitrubu 
they united 



yurakmisi 
he struck her 
p amis' su 
before him 



la'atisu 
to swallow it 
la 



ana 
so as 



izanu 
fill 



not 



va 
and 



she grows faint in her heart 



va 
and 



pasa 
her mouth 



yukpalqi 
she twists. 



VJ 



504 The Beginnings of History. 

29. issuq mulmulla 
he carried in front the sharp weapon he split open 

karassa 
her stomach 

30. kirbisa yubattiqa yusallit libbasa 
her entrails he severed he pierced her heart 

31. iqmiH va naps' atas yupalli 
he struck her down and her life he severed. 

32. Salamsa idda elisa izaza 

Her decease he perceives on her he erects himself proudly 

33. ultu Tiamat alik pani inaru 
After that Tiamat walking before was overthrown 

34. kizrtia yuptarrira puharla issapiha 
her soldiers he dispersed her cohort was scattered 

35. u Hani rigusa aliku idisa 
and the gods her help who came to her side 

36. ittarru iplahu yusihhiru arkalmnu 
trembled became afraid returned behind them 

37. yasegu va napsatus ( l ) ediru 
they saved themselves and their lives put in safety 

38. yus~\talamik naparsudis la We 
they hid themselves taking flight without valiance. 

39 busunuti va kakkisunu yusabbir 

He ... . them and their weapons he broke 

40 peris nadu va kamaris 

as ... . they were beaten and in sadness 
usbu 
they were seated. 

Seven more verses follow, which are extremely obscure and go 
on with the description of the vanquished and crushed condition 
of the auxiliaries of Tiamat. These may be omitted without in- 
convenience or changing the general sense of the text. I stop 
short here with my translation, finding it the part of wisdom to 
confess that 1 do not yet understand these verses, rather than 
attempt to present a version far too conjectural, for which I could 
not conscientiously be responsible. ( 2 ) 

(i) Here is evidently an error for napsatuSunu; otherwise the phrase 
would convey no meaning. 
(2) The reader may be able to form some idea of the difficulties offered 



Appendices. 505 

. He took the instrument in his right hand 

and] he suspended [the bow] and the quiver. 

He shot a flash of lightning before him, 

and an impetuous [fury] filled his body. 

He made also the cimeter which was to penetrate the body 
of Tiamat. 

He held back the four winds, so that her attacks could not be 
produced without, 

the south wind, the north wind, the east wind and the west 
wind. 

His hand placed the cimeter beside the bow of his father Anu. 

He created the bad wind, the hostile wind, the waterspout, the 
hurricane, 

in these verses by the difference in the three versions so far given of 
them. 

G. Smith: 

41. Knowing their capture, full of grief, 

42. their strength removed, shut in bonds, 

43. and at once the strength of their work was overcome with terror, 

44. the throwing of stones going 

45. He cast down tho enemy, his hand 

46. part of the enemy under him ..... 

47. and the god Kingu again . 

Fox Talbot: 

41. A crowd of followers, full of astonishment, 

42. Its remains (Tiamat's) lifted up and on their shoulders hoisted. 

43. And the eleven tribes pouring in after the battle 

44. in great multitudes, coming to see, 

45. gazed at the monstrous serpent .... 

46. and 

47. And the god Bel 

Oppert : 

41. Their strength was vanished, their hand was withered. 

42. That which remained was led and disappeared like a kisuk. 

43. And the eleven offspring, terror filled them; 

44. A deluge without . . came to swallow them up. 

Below we give the transcription of the text : 

41. mu (?) du tubqdti malu dumamu. 

42. ieritsu na$u kalu kilukkil. 

43. u iitin e'srit nabniti Supar pulhati izanu. 

44. milla galle cUiku kalu . . . la. 

45. ittadi cirreti idisu 

46. gadu tuqmatUunu Sapateu 

47. u (AN) kin . . . : ia . m . an 



506 The Beginnings of History. 

four winds, seven winds, the devastating wind, the ceaseless 
wind; 

and he loosened the winds that he had created, seven in 
number, 

to carry ruin to the body of Tiamat by rushing after her. 
He raised up, also, as master, the tempest, his great weapon. 
He mounted a solid chariot, without a rival, which leveled 
everything before it. 

He stood erect in it, and his hand held together the four pairs 
of reins. 

without growing feeble, inundator, merciless for 

her. 

The two .... whose fangs carried a venom, ( x ) 

which] efface all knowledge. 

the fury and the battle .... 

to left [and to right of her] opened [their jaw 

the terrors .... 

. he broke it 

.... he added his and 

He made before him. 

He shut up 



"... Thou hast precipitated thyself [upon me] and 
thou hast directed thy hostility against me. 

But thy troop will not prevail, and it is their bodies which thy 
weapons will strike. 

Turn thee about, and thou and I will engage in a single combat." 

Tiamat, when she heard this, 

was at first stupefied, and altered her resolution. 

She examined attentively above, 

and she fortified strongly and completely her position. 

She prepared an incantation, she placed herself 

and she caused the gods who were fighting [with her] to take 
their weapons. 

And Tiamat assailed the herald of the gods, Marduk ; 



(i) Evidently it refers here to the two infernal monsters, Tiamat's 
auxiliaries. 



Appendices. 507 

they flung themselves impetuously the one on the other in 
combat, and they met in battle. 

The lord drew forth his cimeter and struck her. 

He let loose before him the evil wind, which attacks from 
behind : 

And Tiamat opened her mouth to swallow him, 

but he had caused to enter into her the evil wind in such wise 
that she could not shut her mouth. 

The violence of the wind fills her stomach ; 

her heart sinks, and her face is distorted. 

He (Marduk) carried in front his sharp weapon ; he broke her 
stomach ; 

he cut her in the middle, and pierced her heart ; 

he overcame her and cut short her life. 

He perceived her decease, and he raised himself proudly 
above her. 

When Tiamat, who walked before them, was conquered, 

he dispersed her soldiers ; her cohort was scattered, 

and the gods, her allies, who marched by her side, 

trembled, feared, and turned back. 

They sought refuge to save their lives, 

and they hid themselves as fugitives, despoiled of courage. 

But [he fell] upon them, and broke their arms. 

As . . . they were cut down, sitting in sadness. 

G. — Fragment which appears to belong to the same Narrative. 

The text may be read upon Tablet K 3449 of the British 
Museum. I reproduce Smith's translation : Chaldsean Account of 
Genesis, p. 94. [Cf. Rev. Ed., p. 108. Tr.] 

This fragment would appear to belong to that portion of the 
poem anterior to the one which we have just cited. It refers, in 
fact, to the description of Marduk' s preparations when armed by 
the gods for his contest with Tiamat. 

heart 

burning 

from 

in the temple .... 

may he fix 

the dwelling; of the god . . • 






VJ 



508 The Beginnings of History. 

the great gods 

the gods said (?).... 

the sword that was made the gods saw 

and they saw also the bow that was strung . . . . , 

the work that was made they placed . . . 

carried also Anu in the assembly of the gods . . 

the bow he fitted .... 

and he spake of the bow thus, and said 

"Noble wood, who shall first thus draw thee? 

against whom ? 

speed her punishment the star of the bow in heaven 

and establish the resting-place of 

from the choice of 

and place his throne 

in heaven 



It is possible that the fragments of tablets marked in the British 
Museum K 4832, 3473, and 3938 contain also some remains of 
the same epic narrative, though in a condition too mutilated to be 
of any service to us. An attempt at a rendering of the last two 
may be found in George Smith, Chaldsean Account of Genesis, p. 
92 et seq. [Rev. Ed., p. 107, gives only K 3938. fn.] 

H. — Epic Fragment of the Tradition of Kuti (Cutha) on the First 
Monstrous Births produced in the Womb of the Universe while 
still in a State of Chaos. 

I reproduce the translation of Sayce [Records of the Past, vol. 
XL, p. 109 et seq.), made from the original, which strikes me as 
much superior to that of G. Smith (Chaldsean Account of Genesis, 
p. 102 et seq. [See Sayce in Rev. Ed., p. 92 et seq. Tr.]). The 
text itself has never yet been published. 



Lord of ... . 

.... his lord, the royal power of the gods . . . 

the lance-bearers of his army, the lance-bearers of his army 



lord of the upper and lower regions, 
lord of the archangels 



Appendices. 509 

they who drank the troubled waters, and could not drink pure 
waters, 

of whom with his flame, his weapon, he encircled the crowd, 

took them, destroyed them. 

On a stela as yet was not written, nothing was open, the bodies 
and the productions 

on the surface of the earth had not yet begun to spring up.( J ) 

Nothing was rising from the earth ; and I did not draw nigh 
to it. 

Warriors with bodies like birds of the desert, human beings 

with faces of ravens, 

the great gods had created them 

and on the earth the gods had created a dwelling for them. 

Tiamat gave them their strength. 

The lady of the gods had raised their life. 

In the midst of the earth they had grown and had become 
great, 

and their numbers had increased. 

Seven kings brothers of the same family, 

and six thousand in number was their people. 

Banini their father was king, their mother was the Queen 
Melili ; 

the eldest brother among them, who marched before them, 
Memangab ( 2 ) was his name ; 

the second brother among them, Medudu was his name ; 

the third brother among them, . . . pakh was his name ; 

the fourth brother among them, . . . dada was his name ; 

the fifth brother among them, . . . takli was his name ; 

the sixth brother among them, . . . ruru was his name ; 

the seventh brother among them, . . . rara was his name. 

Here follows a long gap, and with the second column of the 
tablet the text is continued with an account of a great war 
of the heroic ages, between a king of Kuti and some violent and 
impious enemies, who seem to be the descendants of those mon- 
strous personages born in the chaotic empire of Tiamat, and slain 
by the flame of the sun on its first appearance. We do not quote 

Q) I follow here the translation of Sayce; the text reads: ina naraul 
istar ul ipta 1 va pagri u sebatti ina mati ul yuSepi. 

( 2 ) This name is Accadian, like those of all these pe.sonages; it signi- 
fies " the thunderbolt." 



VJ 



510 The Beginnings of History. 

this new portion of the document, which does not directly concern 
our subject. The reader will find a translation of it by Sayce in 
Records of the Past, vol. XI., p. Ill et seq. 

7". — Establishment of Order in the Movements of the Sidereal World 
and the War of the Seven Evil Spirits against the god Moon. 

This account forms the beginning of a great magic incantation 
for the cure of the king, whose suffering is compared with that 
of the god Shin, who was regarded as a type of royalty. The 
text is published in Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, vol. 
IV., pi. 5. Translations have been made by G. Smith, Assyrian 
Discoveries, p. 898 et seq. ; Chaldsean Account of Genesis, p. 107 et 
seq. [Rev. Ed., p. 99 et seq. Tr.] ; Fox Talbot, Records of the 
Past, vol. V., p. 163 et seq. ; Fr. Lenormant, Gazette Archeologique, 
1878, p. 23 et seq. Observations on several points of this docu- 
ment by Friedr. Delitzsch, G. Smith's Chaldseische Genesis, p. 308. 
In my Etudes Accadiennes, vol. III., pp. 121-134, may be found 
the transcription of the primitive Accadian text and of the Assy- 
rian version, accompanied by a literal interlinear version. We 
refer the reader to that instead of increasing the bulk of this 
volume by the reproduction of this philological matter. 

The days which recur in cycles f 1 ) these are the wicked gods, 
the rebellious genii who were formed in the lower part of 
heaven. 

They, they are those who do evil 

plot in their wicked heads . . . the setting of the sun, 

flowing with the rivers 

Between them seven, the first is ... . 

the second an ogre, from whose mouth no one escapes, 

the third a panther which strikes .... 

the fourth a serpent 

(') The comparison of inauspicious days to personal demons occurs 
several times: Cuneif. Inscr. of West. Asia, vol. IV., pi. 1, col. 1, 1. 18 and 
19 ; col. 2, 1. 65 and 66 ; col. 3, 1. 1-4 ; pi. 27, No. 5, 1. 22 and 23. Friedrich 
Delitzsch thinks that the reference here is to the seven unlucky days, 
from the 25th February to the 3d March, even yet dreaded by the in- 
habitants of Syria under the name of mustagriddt (see Wetztein, in Franz 
Delitzsch, Commentnr zu Kohelelh, p. 445 et seq). The allusion seems to me 
rather to refer to the cycle of the periodic return of the lunar eclipses 
after 223 synodic lunar months, a cycle the discover}' of which all an- 
tiquity unanimously attributes to the Chaldseans (see above, p. 285). 



Appendices. 511 

the fifth a watch-dog (?) which against . . . 

the sixth a tempest blowing fiercely which .... 

against god or king, 

the seventh the messenger of the evil wind which . . . 

They are seven, messengers of Anu, their king, 

from city to city each day they direct their steps. 

They are the hurricane which fiercely drives all before it in 
the sky, 

the floating cloud which darkens the sky in the day-time, 

the tempest of wind which blows violently and causes darkness 
on a bright day. 

With the evil winds, in evil winds they circulate ; 

inundation of Ramman, they develop their exploits ; 

at the right hand of Ramman they advance ; 

from the foundations of heaven they dart like lightning ; 

flowing with the rivers they march onward. 

In the vast heavens, abode of Anu, their king, they have set 
themselves to work evil 

and have no rivals. 

At this time Bel heard of this matter, 

and he meditated a resolve in his heart. 

With £a, the supreme sage among the gods, 

he took counsel and 

he appointed Shin (the moon), Shamash (the sun), and Ishtar 
(the planet Venus) in the lower part of heaven to control it ; 

he delegated to them the government of the legions of the 
heavens (to share it) with Anu. 

Thjese three gods, his children, 

to remain fixed day and night without being divided 

he advised them. 

At this time the seven evil gods were moving about in the 
lower part of heaven ; 

before the face of Shin the illuminator fiercely they interposed 
themselves. 

The noble Ramman and Shamash the warrior passed to their 
side : 

Ishtar with Anu the king rose toward the shining seats 

and in the kingship of heaven displayed his power. 

At this time these seven 



\J 



512 The Beginnings of History. 

at the head of the government, in presence .... 

the evil 

in the action of drinking of his shining mouth . . . 

Shin the shepherd ... of mankind ... of the governors 
of the face of the earth. 

.... was overthrown and stopped at the height (of his 
course) being hindered day and night and no longer seated on the 
seat of his dominion. 

The evil gods, messengers of Anu, their king, 

devised with wicked heads, they assisted one another ; 

from the midst of heaven like the wind to the face of the earth 
they hurled themselves. 

Bel the restraint of the noble Shin 

saw in heaven, and, 

master, to his attendant Nuzku he addressed his speech : 

"My attendant Nuzku, carry my speech to the Ocean ; 

the news of my son Shin who in heaven is painfully hindered, 

to Ea in the Ocean repeat it." 

Nuzku obeyed the order of his master, 

to Ea rapidly he went. 

To the chief, to the supreme ruler, to the unfailing master, 

Nuzku repeated . . . the order of his master. 

Ea heard this message in the Ocean ; 

he bit his lip, and his face was filled with tears. 

Ea called his son Marduk and communicated to him the news : 

" Come, my son Marduk ; 

learn, my son, that Shin in the heavens is sorrowfully hin- 
dered ; 

behold his anguish in heaven. 

These seven wicked and murderous gods, having no fear, 

these seven wicked gods, like whirlwinds devastate life on the 
face of the earth ; 

upon the face of the earth they have hurled themselves like a 
waterspout ; 

before the face of the light-giving Shin fiercely they came ; 

the noble Shamash and Ramman the warrior have passed to 
their side." 

A great fracture in the original tablet stops short the narrative 
at this point. There is no trace left us of the verses which re- 



Appendices. 513 

counted the defeat of the seven malevolent spirits and the deliver- 
ance of Shin ; but this denouement may be easily divined by the 
preceding portion. Moreover, the sudden change of the conclu- 
sion is always identical in those of the old magical incantations 
of Akkad which bring the gods upon the scene. Ea, the god of 
all knowledge and of all wisdom, is at the same time the Aver- 
runcus par excellence; he is the last resort for aid against the 
demons, who, always in groups of seven, bring trouble into the 
economy of the world and produce evil therein. Pie calls his son 
Marduk, the Silig-mulu-khi (he who brings good to men) of the 
Akkadians, the great mediator, he who executes the will of the 
gods, and their champion. This Marduk it is, the personification 
of the rising sun, who dissipates darkness and mists ; he it was 
who conquered Tiamat, goddess of the abyss and of the dark, in 
the grand struggle at the beginning of all things, and caused the 
ordered universe to issue from her dismembered body. That 
struggle with the dark and infernal powers of chaos, over which 
he once gained the victory, is continually renewed every time 
that it is necessary to maintain order in the universe. At the 
command of his father Ea he starts forth and repulses the 
demons. 

The combat of the seven evil spirits, sons of Anu, against the 
lunar god, the poetic account of which has just been given, is 
repeated at the close of periodic cycles, as the poet has been 
careful to relate at the beginning, — every time that the orb is 
eclipsed. Thus we read in an astrological document (Cuneif. 
Inscrip. of West. Asia, vol. III., pi. 61, col. 2, 1. 13-16) that upon 
the event of certain celestial phenomena, "the gods of heaven 
and earth will reduce men to dust and cause their ruin ; there 
will occur eclipse, inundation, sicknesses, mortality; the seven 
great evil spirits will carry their barrier in front of the moon.'^ 1 ) 

K. — Generations of the Chief gods of the Chaldseo- Assyrian 
Religion. 

In all polytheisms the theogony is the first form of the expres- 
sion of the cosmogony. Before this latter can reach a philosophi- 
cal expression, the gradual development of the universe, tending 
always towards a more perfect organization, is reflected and sym- 

(*) ildni sa lame u irpiti iprit ameluti tubullunu isivva antaliX rihpu murcu muluv. 
galli rabuti sibitti mahar Sini ittanapriku. 

33 



514 The Beginnings of History. 

bolized in the succession of the generations of the gods who per- 
sonify the forces and phenomena of nature. And this manner of 
explaining the cosmogony, preserved in the sanctuaries, becomes 
more and more refined, and multiplies the generations of primor- 
dial go Is, who now represent abstract principles, and no longer 
visible phenomena or parts of the universe, in proportion as re- 
ligious thought, developing in the philosophic sense, penetrates 
deeper and deeper with its speculations into primitive causes, 
their sequence and their evolution. 

Hence it has seemed to me that it would be useful to add to 
this collection of cosmogonic fragments tables of the relationship 
of the principal gods of the Chaldseo-Assyrian religion, as they 
are preserved to us in the indications scattered throughout the 
cuneiform inscriptions. 

This religion is one in its totality over all the vast territory 
which it covered. It possesses, what was always lacking to 
Hellenic polytheism, a scientific systematization, strong and fixed 
in its essential lines, and dating back to about the year 2000 
B. C, subsequent to which it appears unchanged. But this sys- 
tematization does not prevent certain local variations as regards 
the relationship attributed to some gods, which probably date 
back to the age of the independent establishment of the cults of 
different cities, before the epoch when the great work of the sys- 
tematic regulation of the hierarchy of the pantheon went into 
operation. 

Even outside of these details, peculiar to the religion of single 
towns, it may be affirmed that, as regards the first beginnings, 
the theogony, while remaining identical at bottom, presents di- 
vergencies between Babylon and Assyria strong enough to admit 
of a division into two systems, such as we shall indicate in the 
following tables^ 1 ) 

(!) In these tables we designate by the name of Sandan the Assyrian 
Hercules, whom we have called Adar in the text of the volume. It is 
indeed well established that this last reading is erroneous and should be 
abandoned. The Adrammelek of the Bible is not this god, but a form of 
Shamash, called Adru. The reading Ninib, which was proposed before 
that of Adar, and which Friedr. Delitzsch and Stan. Guyard recently 
revived, cannot be proved any more satisfactorily than the other. The 
part of wisdom for the present seems to be to designate the Chaldseo- 
Assyrian Hercules by the form which the Greeks give his name until a 
phonetic expression may be found, which so far has not been met with. 

Hence results a serious erratum in the body of the work. We beg of the 




Wa). Nergi 



a, were 
B letter 
r, from 
\ihar or I 

he As-/ 
1 deity 
; ip wa/ 
plusry 



| 5 ai 
of 



I. Babylonian «*,.t.m. 









7*mm/ { ftjh m Av»). 



XiM-gml). 



> 
I 

.' 
■ 

lil' \ to tll<- | 

4i 



thAl it amounted almuat tu a filti 

in natural Mqnjgei he came tu be tr b -ar\lcj u li. 



/»/». - T,amat. 



1 






DidSn. A'jA/k ((,i/ 



Appendices. 515 

Apsu. — Tiamat. 



I I 

Laharnu. — Luhmu. 

I 

Asskar. — Ki-shar. 

I 

■ I I J 

Ami. Bel. Ea. 

We will not reproduce here the remainder of the genealogy, 
which must remain the same. 

The fundamental plan of these cosmogonic constructions may- 
be summai-ized in the following manner : A first principle, ma- 
terial and still unorganized, existing before everything else, and 
never having had a beginning ; at times this first principle is 
represented as simple and including within itself the two sexes, 
the idea of maternity predominating ; again it is represented as a 
duality of male and female, in which the feminine has produced the 
masculine, which afterwards reacts upon it ; and finally, in other 
cases, in the existence of this first principle, duplicating its own 
essence, may be distinguished a series of evolutions represented 
by a succession of pairs, like each other, and ahvays solitary, 
emanating one from the other. From them, when the universe 
assumes its ordered form, issue three parallel triads of cosmic 
divinities, each one composed of father, mother and son, in imi- 
tation of mortal families : 

1st. Anu and Anatu, with sometimes Isku, sometimes Rammanu, 
for their son ; the first name predominates during the most ancient 

reader to correct to Sandan wherever Adar may be found printed. This, 
however, is merely a correction as to name, and involves no fundamental 
change in the different passages which refer to this god. His nature and 
the part attributed to him are well denned, even though the exact appel- 
lation which belongs to the unvarying expression of hi-* name, under an 
ideographic form, still remains doubtful. [This change has not been 
made in the present translation, owing to the strength of the argument 
in favor of Adar. See Schrader, in Berichte uber die Verhandlungen der 
Konigl. Sachsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig. Fhiloi-Hist. 
Classe, 1880, p. 19 et seq. Tr.] 



516 The Beginnings of History. 

epochs, but later Ishu loses his importance, and the normal type 
of the third triad makes it consist of Anu, Anatu and Rammanu. 

2d. Belu and Beltu, with Shinu for son. As an exception, in 
the local cult of Nipur, this triad appears consisting of Belu, 
Beltu and Sandan, who becomes the lover of his mother. 
3d. Ea and Davkina, with Marduku for their son. 
These first three cosmic triads correspond with the three 
divisions of the world, the sky, the earth and the ocean en- 
circling the earth. They serve as types of the triads of the local 
religions, constituted upon the same plan, but composed often of 
gods which hold an inferior rank in the general system ; that of 
Babylon, for instance, being made up of Marduku and Zirbanitu, 
with Nabu for son; that of Simpar, or Sippara, of Adru or 
Shamshu, and Anunitu, with Dumuzi for their son. Sometimes, 
too, a daughter is substituted for the son, as at Uruk, where the 
triad is composed of Anu, Anatu or Nana, and Ishtar. 

This order is reflected in the official hierarchy of the ranks 
of the gods as set over different sections of the government of 
the universe. Here we have in the first place a god, one and 
supreme, in Assyi'ia Asshur, and in Babylon Ilu, "the god," 
regarded in his most comprehensive sense. It is well to note 
that the conception of Ilu, having this character and a personal 
existence very distinctly marked, stands out separately only at 
a late epoch in Babylon, long subsequent to the time when the 
Assyrians had thus conceived their Asshur. Prior to this, the 
conception of a supreme god is but vaguely developed in the 
Babylonian mind, and the position as chief of the divine hier- 
archy is attributed to Anu. Below this deus exsuperantissimus are 
ranged three groups, each composed of three divinities : 
1st. The cosmic triplicity of Anu, Belu and Ea; 
2d. The feminine triplicity of the goddesses, corresponding to 
them as consorts, Anatu, Beltu and Davkina, a triplicity which, 
however, often resolves itself into the unity of the polyonymous 
and multiform Beltu ; 

3d. A triplicity more localized than the first in the material 
bodies of nature, Shinu, Shamshu and Rammanu. 

Below this last group, again, may be classed the divinities of 
the five planets, standing thus in the order of hierarchic import- 
ance: Marduku, Ishtar, Sandan, Nergallu and Nabu. Then, below 
these, again, are ranged the numerous legions of the dii minores, 



Appendices. 517 

as in the theogony all their generations issue from the first three 
cosmic triads. 

The echo of these theogonic and hierarchic constructions may 
yet be found in certain indications of the classic literature of 
later times, which are naturally quoted in this connection. 

L. — Fragments relating to the Three Primordial Triads of the 
Chaldseans. 

1. We will now examine the hypotheses of the ancient theolo- 
gians, the ideas presented by the philosophic conceptions which 
they express. The first of these is that of the Chaldseans, uni- 
versally acknowledged to be the most mystical of all. It is also 
that one of all these conceptions which corresponds the best and 
without any effort to our opinions, which aim at bringing about 
the same unity of the Intelligent. In fact, these theurgists, 
instructed by the gods themselves, have transmitted to us the 
tradition of the three triads ; and the Egyptians and Phoenicians, 
on their side, believe numerous generations of gods to be devel- 
oped in the Intelligent. — (Damasc, De prim, princip., Ill, p. 
344, ed. Kopp.) 

Our fragment A proves that Damascius had a very clear and 
exact acquaintance with Chaldoean theology, drawn from ancient 
and authorized sources. His testimony, therefore, has always an 
undoubted value. Only he looks at this ancient theology, of 
which he speaks so pertinently, through the prismatic medium of 
Neo-Platonic conceptions, which he applies to it, and the Ennead 
of which, for example, he discovers here. 

The varied testimony which will follow does not, like this, refer 
directly to the pure and authentic theology of the Chaldaso- 
Assyrians, but rather to the doctrines of the so called Chaldsean 
Theurgy, which in the Middle Ages was extant as a secret and 
magic sect, and gave birth to an extensive apocryphal literature, 
with which Michael Psellos, in the eleventh century, showed him- 
self specially familiar. The adepts in Chaldseism at that epoch 
did not any longer know anything of the religion of the ancient 
Chaldceans ; they would have been thoroughly surprised and 
embarrassed had they been confronted with the true names of 
the personages of its Pantheon. But, in spite of radical changes, 
of a mixture of elements borrowed from Neo-Platonism, and 
gathered in from all sources, the tradition transmitted from 
generation to generation caused certain essential ideas to appear 



518 The Beginnings of History. 

in it, which, undoubtedly had their origin in the sanctuaries of 
Babylon and Chaldsea. 

2. The Ennead is the divine number, for it is composed of 
three triads ; and thus, as Porphyry puts it, it preserves the 
expression of the highest form of the theological conception, 
according to the philosophy of the Chalda3ans. — (Johann. Lau- 
rent. Lyd, De Mens, IV., 78.) 

3. After the One and the Good, they- (the Chaldeans) honored 
a paternal and generative source, composed of three triads. And 
each triad comprises father, power and spirit.— (Anonym., Com- 
pend. de doctrina Ghaldaica, in Stanley, Hist, philosophy vol. II., 
p. 1125.) 

We know that Neo-Platonism thus defined in the triads of 
ancient polytheisms the parts of father, mother and son. 

4. The Chaldoeans say that the First Cause is one, and they 
describe it as absolutely ineffable. After it they imagine a pater- 
nal and generative source, composed of three triads, after which 
they introduce attributes with passions (ivyyag), then that which 
is at once beyond (6 ana^ ETreneiva), and the power of capacity 

(ektiktj dvva/ug) After these powers, they say there are 

ten leaders of the world (noa/iayo'i), then the initiators and those 
who contain in themselves the things (TEherapxai ml avvoxstg). — 
(Michael Psellos, quoted by Sathas in the Bulletin de Correspond- 
ence hellenique, vol. I., p. 207.) 

It may be seen that in this last fragment, outside the mention 
of the three fundamental triads, we come upon a series of com- 
plications, borrowed for the larger part from Neo-Platonism, with 
nothing either ancient or Chaldsean about them. Therefore I 
will beg to be excused from reproducing the other passages from 
Psellos on the system of imaginary Chaldeean philosophy of the 
Middle Ages, and will content myself with referring the reader 
to his "E/cfaoYC KE^alaiudng ml cvvrojxog rav Trapa 'Ka/id'aiotg 6oy- 
pdruv, in Migne's Patrologia Grseca, vol. CXXIL, pp. 1150-1154; 
and to Sathas' MsGaiuviKy (3ij3?aodqKn, vol. IV., p. 459 ; vol. V., 
pp. 57, 401, 449 and 510. 

M. — Fragments relating to the Cosmic Characters of the Masculine 

and Feminine Principles. 
I conclude this first group of extracts, which are far from pos- 
sessing equal value, but all of which, in my opinion, deserve to 
be studied and compared, with a discrimination between what is 



Appendices. 519 

original, that which is adopted at first hand, and that which comes 
from a remote tradition, already materially changed by a long 
series of transmissions, — I conclude, I repeat, this group of ex- 
tracts with three taken from the Philosophicmena, belonging to the 
last category. And although there is not the slightest evidence 
of their being in any way directly taken by the author from the 
original Chaldeean sources, though the ancient religious doctrines, 
formerly embodied in a mythologic and theogonic form, are here 
transformed into philosophical abstractions, which bear upon the 
face of them a modern impress, the Count de Vogue {Melanges 
d' Archeologie Orientale, p. 57 et seq.) has firmly established the 
real value of these fragments and the great proportion of genu- 
inely antique conceptions which they contain. 

The first is presented as the summary of the teachings which, 
according to the legend, were given to Pythagoras by the Chal- 
dean Zaratas. ( l ) 

1. In the first principle there are two causes for all beings, 
the father and the mother. The father is light and the mother 
darkness, and the parts of light are heat, dryness, volatility and 
quickness ; those of darkness, cold, humidity, heaviness and slow- 
ness. From all this the world is made up, from the combination 
of the two principles, masculine and feminine. And the world is 
a musical harmony, for the sun in its revolution follows a harmo- 
nious march. As to the production of things on the earth and 
in the universe, this is what Zaratas said. There are two divini- 
ties, one celestial, the other chthonian. To the chthonian divinity 
belongs the production of all that is born of the earth, and she 
herself is water. As to the celestial god, he is fire, sharing the 
nature of the air, which is at once cold and warm. . . . This 
is then the essence of all things. — (Philosophumena, I., 2 ; p. 8, 
ed. Miller.) 

2. Pythagoras disclosed the fact that the monad was the unbe- 
gotten principle of all things, while the dyad and all the other 
numbers are begotten. He says that the monad is the father of 
the dyad,' which, in turn, is the mother of innumerable genera- 
tions. And Zaratas, the Chaldoean, master of Pythagoras, called 
the one father and the other mother. For, according to Pytha- 

(!) The name of Zaratas appears to have been borrowed from that of 
Zarathustra, although the doctrine described under this name bears no 
resemblance, to Zoroastrianism. 



520 The Beginnings of History, 

goras, the dyad is born of the monad ; the monad is masculine 
and the first principle, and the dyad feminine. — [Philosophumena, 
VI., 23; p. 178, ed. Miller.) 

3. Taking the monad as a point of departure, Providence 
caused the division of the elements as far as four, air and fire, 
water and earth. And having made the world of them, it con- 
stituted it an androgyn ; it placed two elements in the upper 
hemisphere, air and fire, and this it is which is called the hemi- 
sphere of the monad, beneficent, tending upward, and masculine. 
For the monad being composed of essentially volatile parts, always 
soars toward the lightest and purest part of the ether. As to the 
two heavier elements, earth and water, they have been attributed 
to the dyad, and the hemisphere composed of them is called the 
hemisphere tending downward, feminine and maleficent. Now, 
on examining the reciprocal relations of the two superior ele- 
ments, it may be seen that they have in themselves the male and 
female elements, for the fructification and growth of all things. 
For the fire is male in relation to the air, which is female ; and, 
on the other hand, the water is male in its relation to the earth, 
which is female. And thus it is that from the beginning there 
has been copulation of the fire and of the air, of the earth and 
of the water. For the fire is the active power in its relation to the 

air, and the water in its relation to the earth Light is 

connected with the monad, and darkness with the dyad ; material 
life with light and the monad ; death with darkness and the 
dyad ; justice with life, and injustice with death. — (Philosophu- 
mena, IV., 43 ; p. 78, ed. Miller.) 

\J 



II. 

PHCENICIA. 



A. — Theogony of Sidon according to Eudemius. 

The Sidonians, as the same writer tells us, imagine that before 
all else was Time, after that Desire and Darkness. From the 
union of these, as the first two principles, were born Aer (the 
air) and Aura (the breath, represented as female), Aer repre- 
senting the intelligent in its purity, and Aura the first animated 
type proceeding from it in motion. Afterward there issues from 
this pair the cosmic egg, conformably to the intelligent spirit. — 
(Damasc, Be prim, princip., 125, p. 884, ed Kopp.) 

B. — Phoenician Cosmogony of the Books of Machos. 

Outside the writings of Eudemius, we. find the following in the 
Phoenician cosmogony of Mochos. At first there existed Ether 
and Air^ 1 ) the two principles of whom was begotten Ulomos 
('U16m),( 2 ) the intelligent god, meaning, as I suppose, the highest 
degree of intelligence. Of the copulation of this god with him- 
self is begotten, first, Chusoros, the Opener (Busher-Pta' h),( 3 ) 
next, the Egg. It appears to me that by the last named is meant 
the intelligent spirit, and by Chusoros, the Opener, the intelli- 
gent power, which first separated nature disorganized in chaos ; 
unless, after the first two pi-inciples, the highest degree of the 
intelligent may be the Wind (Ruah), and the medium degree 
the winds Lips and Notos (the South-west and the South), for 
they are said to be created before Ulomos. In this case, it is 
Ulomos who would be the intelligent spirit, Chusoros, the Opener, 
the primordial order proceeding from the intelligent, and the Egg 
the sky. For it was said that when broken in half each of its 
parts formed sky and earth* — (Damasc, Be prim, princip., 125, 
p. 385, ed Kopp.) 

(!) Represented as male and female, and corresponding to A6r and 
Aura of the cosmogony of Eudemius. 

( 2 ) Time, answering to the Chronos of Eudemius. 

( 3 ) Personifying the attraction of cohesion in the organic world, and 
at the same time the demiurge opening the cosmic egg. 

521 



\J 



522 The Beginnings of History. 

C. — On the Part attributed to Time in the Phoenician Cosmogony. 

The multiple one (to ev iroTOA) is thus named as containing 
in its close multiplicity the universal cause of all that proceeds 
from it by whatever way of division : wherefore the sons of the 
Chaldseans celebrate it as the source of sources, Orpheus as 
" Metis bearing within herself the seed of the gods;" lastly, the 
Phoenicians as cosmic Time ('Ulom), embracing all things in 
itself. — (Damasc, De prim, princip., 89, p. 268, ed. Kopp.) 

D. — Cosmogony of Hieronymus and of Hellanicos. i^) 

The theology circulating under the names of Hieronymus and 
Hellanicos, if indeed these be not one and the same personage, is 
thus conceived. In the beginning was the water and the damp 
mud, which, hardening, became the earth. Thus we have, as 
primitive basis of things, water and earth, water as representing 
the principle of division, of repulsion, earth that of attraction 
and of cohesion ; and the first principle from which these two 
proceed is left nameless. And these authors say in excuse for 
their silence that its nature is ineffable. A third principle springs 
from the union of the two which they name, water (male) and 
earth (female) ; it has the form of a dragon with the heads of a 
bull and a lion joined, and between them the face of a god 
(anthropomorphic), with wings on his shoulders, and they call 
him Time ('Ulom), who never grows old,( 2 ) or Hei-acles (Mel- 
garth) ; to him is united Necessity, who is Nature, the same 
as the incorporeal Adrastea ('Ashtharth), who stretches her 
measuring rod everywhere about the universe, defining its limits. 
This pair is, I believe, the third principle existing in its essence, 
and has been conceived as divided into male and female, in 
order to represent it as generating cause of all things. And 
it is at this point that I return to the theology of the [Orphic] 
rhapsodies, which ignores the first two principles with the single 

(i) Hieronymus, the Egyptian, and Hellanicos are mentioned together 
by Josephus (Antiq. Jud., I., 3, 9) as having written some ^olvlkik.6.. (For 
Hellanicos, see also Ceclren., Histor. Compend., vol. I., p. 11, ed. of Pans.) 
It is to such a book that one naturally refers this cosmogony, whose 
oriental, probably Tyrian, origin is evident, though it appears to us under 
a form permeated by the Orphic spirit, as Damascius has clearly seen, 
cataloguing it side by side with the cosmogony attributed to Orpheus. 

(2) Xpovos d-yrjparos, perhaps, should be corrected Xpovos anr/paPTOS, 

" unlimited Time." 



Appendices. 523 

one which precedes the two others, and which we have just seen 
pass them by in silence, taking for its starting-point the third prin- 
ciple, issue of the other two, considering it as the first defined and 
proportioned to man's understanding.^) For this Time, which 
never grows old, which is so greatly honored, is here made the 
father of Ether (masculine) and Chaos (feminine, Baku). And 
the dragon Time brings forth a triple generation, the intelligent 
Ether, the infinite Chaos, and, thirdly, the darksome Erebus. 
This is the second triad, analogous to the first, but presented as ex- 
pressing power in the same way as that does the generating prin- 
ciple. For its third person is the darksome Erebus ; its first, the 
father, is the Ether, not simple, but intelligent ; lastly, its inter- 
mediary person is the infinite Chaos. And they add that in 
these Time engendered an egg, making of these a product of 
Time, begotten in these three, for the third triad, that of the 
intelligent principles, proceeds therefrom. What, then, is this 
last ? The egg contains within itself the dyad of masculine and 
feminine natures, and virtually the multitude of all germs ; and 
as to the third personage joined to this duality of the egg, it is 
incorporeal, having golden wings on its shoulders, with bulls' 
heads issuing from its sides, and upon its head a monstrous 
dragon, which assumes in succession the appearances of all kinds 
of animals. This third personage should be regarded as the 
spirit of the triad, the egg as its paternal principle, and the dyad 
of natures contained by it, with the germs of all generation, as 
its power. And the third god of the third triad is he whom the 
[Orphic] theology celebrates as the Divine First-born, the Zeus- 
Director of all things and of the universe, in such wise that it 
calls him also Pan. — (Damasc, De prim, princip., 123, p. 381 et 
seq., ed. Kopp.) 



(') In order to comprehend this it will be necessary to refer to a curious 
passage of Proclus (in Plat., Tim., II., 130, p. 307, ed. Schneider) : " The 
theology of Orpheus speaks in the same way of Phanes ; according to it 
the first living god was polycephalus, having the heads of a ram, a bull 
and a monstrous lion; he issued from the primordial egg which enclosed 
the animal called by Plato — and with reason — the great god who exists 
of himself (airo^oi')." Damascius here compares this Phanes with the 
Chronos-Heracles (' Uldm-Melqarth) of Hieronymus' and Hellanicos' Phoe- 
nician cosmogony; and from this time on the narratives taken from the 
two sources are so thoroughly interwoven in his text that it becomes im- 
possible to distinguish between them with any degree of certainty. 



524 The Beginnings of History. 

E. — First Phoenician Cosmogony of the Sanchoniathon of Philo of 
Byblos. 

He supposes the first principle to be a disturbed and windy air, 
or a breath {ruah) of agitated wind; and a disordered chaos, black as 
Erebus (chahotti ereb) , and these were from everlasting and endured 
for innumerable centuries. 

But when afterwards, he says, the Breath {Ruah) fell in love 
with his own principles, he made a blending of himself, and this 
copulation was called Desire {Hipeg). This was the principle of 
the creation of all things, and he knew not his own creation ; and of 
this copulation of the Breath was born Mot (Mtith), which some de- 
fine to be the mud or putrefaction of an aqueous mixture, and from 
this mud there issued forth all the seed (zera e ) of creation, and the 
generation of all things. 

And there were( x ) living beings {Muth) without sensations, of 
whom were born the intelligent beings, and they were called Zoph6- 
samin (Cophe-sham$m),-wh\ch means Contemplators of the heavens. 

And Mot was made in the form of an egg,( 2 ) and he lighted him- 
self up, and the sun, the moon, the stars, and the great orbs (the 
planets) [shone]." 

Such is their cosmogony, which results in pure atheism. Let us 
see now how they introduce into it the generation of living beings. 

The atmosphere being illuminated by the burning of the earth 
and the sea, winds were produced, clouds and enormous sheets of 
water from the heavens pouring down upon the earth. For when 
all things were separated and parted from the place where they at 
\J first were by the effect of the burning heat of the sun, they came 
together again, rushing through the air, and thunder and lightning 
were produced by the shock; and the intelligent animals were 
awakened by the rumbling of the thunder, alarmed by the noise, 
and male and female ( 3 ) began to move upon the earth and in the 
sea. 

Such is the mode of generation of living beings. The same writer 
goes on to say : 

Behold that which is found in the cosmogony written by Taaut 
and in his books, according to the proofs and the conceptions dis- 



(i) In the chaos of M6t. 

(2) The text is also susceptible of the translation : " And the Zophgsamin 
were made in the. form of an egg And Mot lighted himself up." 

(3) Henceforth separate, having been hitherto united. 



Appendices. 525 

cerned by his intelligence, which he discovered and made known 
to us. 

Then, having named Notos, Boreas, and the other Winds, (*) he goes 
on thus : 

These cosmic beings (the sun, the moon, the stars, and the winds) 
are they to whom the first [men] dedicated the productions of the 
earth, regarding them as gods, and worshiping them, because from 
them they drew their life, they and their descendants offering to 
these gods libations and sacrifices ;( 2 ) and the reasons which inspired 
this adoration Avere consistent with their weakness, and the timidity 
of their soul. 

He says afterwards : 

Of the Wind Colpias (Qol piah, "the voice of the wind"), and of 
his wife, Baau (Bahti), interpreted as signifying the night, were 
born JEon (feminine, Havdth) and Protogonos {Adam Qadmuri), 
mortals thus named ; and it is Mon who found out how to nourish 
herself with the fruit of the tree. They who were born of them were 
called Genos and Genea (Qen and Qendth), and lived in Phoenicia. 
Overcome by the burning heat, they lifted up their hands toward 
heaven to adore the sun, which they regarded as the only god and 
master of heaven, calling it Beelsamen (Ba'alshamcm), which, in 
Phoenician, signifies "lord of the heavens;" this is the Zeus of the 
Greeks. 

Then he goes on to accuse the Greeks of error, in the following 
words : 

It is not without reason that we have deemed it necessary to give 
these explanations, but in order to establish the true meaning of the 
names which the Greeks, in their ignorance, often accepted with a 
different signification, troubled by the ambiguity of the translation 
given them.. 

He continues : 

Afterwards of the race of iEon and Protogonos ( 3 ) were born 



1 ) Compare the enumeration of all the winds at the time of the cosmo- 
gonic battle of Marduk against Tiamat in the Chaldoeo-Babylonian epic 
fragment. I. F. 

( 2 ) This whole passage is incomprehensible in the corrupt text which 
has come down to us, for it seems to be stated there that the Winds 
worshiped the gods and made them their offerings. But we find it again 
quoted by itself in Eusebius (Prcepar. evangel, I., 9, p. 28), and this time 
correctly. It is from him that we have made our translation. 

( 3 ) Or, perhaps : " of Genos, son of iEon and Protogonos," if with Gaisford 
we correct anb TeVovs [t<jv] Aiwj'os. 



526 The Beginnings of History. 

mortal children, called Light (JVur), Fire (Ish), and Flame (Lahab). 
These were they who found out how to produce fire by the friction 
of pieces of wood, and taught its use. They had sons who exceeded 
them in size and lofty stature ; and their names were given to the 
mountains of which they were masters, which were called after 
them, Casion (Qagiun), Libanus (Lebdnun), Antilibanus {Hermuri), 
andBrathy (Taburf). 

Of these were born Samemrumos {Shamt-mdrum) ,(}) who is also 
called Hypsuranios, and Usoos (Ushd for £osh).{ 2 ) They began 
to make profit by their mothers, offering them for money, for 
women then prostituted themselves shamelessly to the first comer. 

He goes on to say : 

Hypsuranios fixed his dwelling in Tyre, and found out how to 
make huts of reeds, rushes and papyrus ; and he quarreled with his 
brother Usoos, who had discovered the art of making garments out 
of the skins of wild beasts, whom he seized and cast down. Torrents 
of rain coming on, with violent winds, the trees which grew at Tyre, 
rubbing against each other, took fire, and the whole forest was 
burned up. Then Us6os, taking a tree, and stripping it of its 
branches, made the first venture of launching upon the sea; he 
dedicated two stelas to the Fire and the Wind ; he worshiped them, 
and watered them with the blood offered as a libation for the 
animals he had taken in the chase. 

And when they were dead, they who survived them dedicated to 
them pillars which they erected, paid worship to these stelas, and 
instituted feasts which they celebrated in their vicinity each year. 

And long afterwards there were born of the race of Hypsuranios 
Agreus ( (led), and Halieus ( Qiddri), who discovered how to hunt and 
to fish, and after them were named the hunters and the fishers.( 3 )— 
(Euseb., Prcepar. evangel., I., 10; Sanchoniathon, pp. 8-18, ed. 
Orelli.) 

(i)I cannot at all subscribe to the ordinary restoration Shamemrum, which 
grammatically is impossible, as the plural of the word " heavens" should 
be here construed shame instead of shamem. 

( 2 ) This is the Bes of the Egyptian monuments, a god of Semitic origin, 
to whom apply in the most perfect manner all the features of Sanchonia- 
thon's narrative. Bosh-Bes becomes Usoos, as Bodoshthor (for 'Abd'ash- 
tharth), and Badam Udostor, and Udam in certain Greek transcriptions. 
(See Schrceder, Die phoenizische Sprache, p. 114). 

(3) The original Phoenician text appears to have contained the following 
phrase, ill understood by the Greek translator, but showing itself through 
his version : umlhdm iqqdru Cldon ve qidonim, ,; and after them were named 
Sidon and the Sidonians." 



Appendices. 527 



F. — Second Phoenician Cosmogony of the Sanchoniathon of Philo of 
Byblos. 

Of theni( 1 ) were born two brothers, authors of the discovery of 
fire and its uses. 

One of them, Chusor (Hushor) } exercised the art of (magic) form- 
ulae, of incantations, and of divination ; this is Hephaistos, the in- 
ventor of the hook, the bait, the line, and the fishing boat, and the 
first man who ventured on navigation. After his death he was 
honored as a god. He is likewise called Zeus Meilichios (Maldk, 
the workman). And they say that it was his brother who thought 
of building brick walls. ( 2 ) 

Subsequently two young persons were born of his race, called 
Technites (Qin) and the Autochthon, made of earth (Adam min- 
hd'addmdt/i). These are they who found out how to mix chopped 
straw with the clay of bricks, to dry them in the sun, and to con- 
struct roofs. 

Of them were born others, one of whom was named Agros (Sid) 
and Agrotes (Sade"), the hero of the fields, (whose image is specially 
honored m Phoenicia, with his arch borne upon a chariot, and the 
people of Byblos in particular call him the greatest of the gods.) ( 3 ) 

These are they who discovered how to build courts to houses, 
besides enclosures and subterranean apartments ; it is from them 
that agriculturists and huntsmen are descended. And they are 
called Aletes (Him), and Titans (Nepilim). 

Q) Here another cosmogony is evidently taken up, going back to the 
demiurge, and subsequently producing the first human generations. It 
has been most awkwardly patched on to the end of the other, in such 
fashion that the words e£ 5>v, with which it begins, and which indicate the 
filiation of the demiurge, Hushdr, seem to refer to C&d and Cldun, which 
is absurd and impossible. In the primitive text these two words evidently 
referred to the first principles from which the organizer of the world had 
proceeded, perhaps Qol-piah. and Bahu. 

( 2 ) There is in all probability some alteration in the text here, for it 
seems probable that Malak may have been the name of the brother of 
Hiishor, rather than an epithet applied to him, since in the present form 
of the narrative this brother has no name given him. 

( 3 ) The explanatory addition that Philo of Byblos inserts in this place, 
in the ancient Phoenician text, which he is translating from .Sancho- 
niathon, is based upon a gross error of his, which Scaliger pointed out in 
his day. He confounded the hero Sade, type of the agriculturist, with 
Shadde (the Almighty), the Hebrew Shaddai, the orthography of which 
was, in fact, the same in Phoenician. (See above, p. 160, n. i.) 



528 The Beginnings of History. 

Of them were born Aniynos and Magos,( x ) who taught people how 
to construct villages and build sheep-folds. 

And of these were born Misor (Ifishor), and Sydyc (Q'ddiXq), 
meaning the active and the just; these are they who discovered the 
use of salt. 

Of Misor were born Taaut (Tatit), who invented the first elements 
of writing, and whom the Egyptians call Thooth, the Alexandrians 
Thoyth, and the Hellenes Hermes ; of Sydyc came the Dioscuri, the 
Cabiri, the Corybantes or gods of Samothracia (Kabirim), who were 
the first to invent a complete ship. 

And of these, others were born, who became the discoverers of 
medicinal herbs, and remedies against the bite of serpents and cu- 
rative incantations. — (Euseb., Prceparat. evangel., I., 10; Sancho- 
niathon, pp. 18-24.) 

G. — Great Theogony, under the form of an Epic Recital, of the San- 
choniaihon of Philo of Byblos. ( 2 ) 

At this time there existed a personage called Elioun (' Eliun) , 
signifying the Very High, and his consort called Beruth (Ba'alath 
Btruthf), who dwelt at Byblos. 

Of them was born Epigeios or Autochthon {Adam Qadmun), af- 
terward called Uranos (Shdma), and it is after him that the element 
over our heads is called heaven, because of his incomparable beauty. 
To him was born also, of these same parents already named, a sister, 
who was called G& (Addmdth), and her beauty gave the name to 
that which we designate by the expression earth. 

Their father, the Very High, having been slain in a fight with 
wild beasts, was deified, and his children instituted in his honor li- 
bations and sacrifices. Heaven, having succeeded to the authority 
of his father, took in marriage the Earth, his sister. And he had 
of her four sons, Ilos (II), who was also called Cronos, Betylos 
(Beth-ill), Dagon (Ddgun), whose name signifies the god of wheat, 
and Atlas. ( 3 ) 

0) The name of Amynos is doubtless to be compared with the Biblical 
'Ammon,' and connected with the idea of the gathering together of 
flocks. In this case, Magos would, perhaps, be the altered and shortened 
form of a name associated with the rustic hut ma'ar, out of which the 
Latins have made magar and magal. 

( 2 ) This theogonic narrative appears to have belonged to Byblos, which 
is the centre of all the occurrences described. 

( 3 ) The original Phoenician form is unknown and its restoration impos- 
sible. But, guided by the assonance and the part attributed in mythology 
to Atlas, a primitive name may be imagined, derived from the root natal 
with a prosthetic aleph. 



Appendices. 529 

Besides these the concubines of Heaven had a numerous pos- 
terity, which made Earth angry ; in her jealousy she pursued Heaven 
with abuse to such an extent that they ended by being divorced, 
and Heaven, after being separated from her, returned with violence 
whenever the fancy took him, approaching her, and then withdraw- 
ing. And he also attempted to slay the children he had had of 
her. But the Earth always succeeded in defending herself, sum- 
moning her auxiliaries to her aid. 

When Cronos (ll) had attained to man's estate, he took as adviser 
and helper Hermes Trismegistus {Tatit), and he was his scribe. 
And he declared war against the Heaven, his father, in order to 
avenge his mother. 

Cronos then had two children, Persephone (Jldth, Math) and 
Athene ('Andth). The first died a virgin. And by the advice of 
Athene and Hermes, Cronos fabricated a javelin and an iron lance. 
Then Hermes, having pronounced magic formulas upon the com- 
panions of Cronos, excited in them an ardent desire to fight against 
Heaven in the cause of Earth. Thus Cronos, having given battle 
to Heaven, drove him from power and succeeded to his kingdom. 

In the combat the favorite concubine of Heaven was taken pris- 
oner, being with child, and Cronos gave her to Dagon; living with 
whom, she brought into the world the child of Heaven, which she 
carried in her womb, and he was called Demarus {Themdr, Ba'al- 
Thdmdr.) 

Afterwards Cronos surrounded the place which he inhabited with 
a wall, and built the first city in Phoenicia, Byblos. 

After that, his suspicions being roused against his brother, Atlas, 
he flung him into the bowels of the earth, where he buried him, by 
the advice of Hermes. 

About the same time, the sons of the Dioscuri (Kabirim) having 
collected barks and vessels, went to sea. Being cast ashore near 
Mount Casion, they dedicated a temple there. 

And the companions of Ilos-Cronos were called Eloeim (Elohim), 
as we would say, Cronians ; for they derived their name from 
Cronos. 

But the son of Cronos was Sadidos (Shadid) ; he struck him with 
his own sword, having reason to suspect him, and deprived him of 
life, thus becoming the executioner of his own son. Likewise he 
cut off his daughter's head, so that all the gods were stupefied at the 
counsels of Cronos. 

After some time had passed, Heaven, in wandering about, met his 
34 



530 The Beginnings of History. 

virgin daughter, Astarte (' Ashthdrth) , with her two sisters, Rhea 
(Ammd) ( l ) and Dione (Ba'alth), and sent them to slay Cronos by 
craft. And Cronos took them all for concubines, though they were 
his sisters. Heaven, having heard of this, sent marching against 
Cronos, Destiny ( Giddt, Hebrew Gad) and Hara (JYo'emd, 'Ashthar- 
No'emd), with other allies; but Cronos seduced these women, and 
kept them with him. 

Heaven devised furthermore the Betyles (beth-ul), by animating 
stones. 

And to Cronos were born of Astarte seven daughters, the Tani- 
des( 2 ) (Tanith) or Artemis, and of Rhea seven sons, the youngest of 
whom was deified from his birth ; lastly, of Dione he had daughters, 
and two more sons of Astarte, Pothos (Hiptc) and Eros (Dud). 

As to Dagon, having invented wheat and the plough, he was called 
Zeus Aro trios. 

And Sydyc (C'dd'dq), whose name signifies the just, having mar- 
ried one of the Tanides, had a son, Asclepios (Eshmun.) 

And in the land beyond the river (Euphrates) ( 3 ) were born to 
Cronos three sons, a second Cronos (II), his father's homonyn, Zeus 
Belos (Ba'al, or particularly Habba'al), and Apollo (Reshep). 

About the same time were born Pontos ( Yam), Typhon (Qeph6n), 
and Nereus (Ndhdr), brother of Pontos and son of Belos. And of 
Pontos was born Sidon (Shiddo),^) who, gifted with most marvel- 
ous voice, invented the art of song, and also Poseidon ( Tan or Tan- 
nin).^) 

(!) The Etymologieon Magnum (v. 'Aa^i) shows the assimilation of this 
Phoenician form with the Rhea of the Greeks, and an inscription invokes 
Amma side by side with Ba'alth (Euting, Punische Steine, pi. xxii., No. 215.) 

( 2 ) The text reads ema TtTaviBeg, but the correction enra Tavi'Ses is 
evident. These seven Tanith recall the seven Hat'hor of Egyptian my- 
thology. 

( 3 ) May not kv llepaia. which occurs curiously in this place, be an error for 

axrb Peas ? 

( 4 ) I cannot possibly regard this Sid6n as a personification of the City 
of Cid6n, as is usual. Her name ought to express her character as a 
singer or siren, and therefore I do not hesitate to recognize in it the en- 
igmatical shidddh of Ecclesinstes, ii.. 8. The termination ojv suggests to 
me the restoration, there, of an ending in 6 instead of d, as in Didd, Thurd, 
nesso (nepo, "flower"), etc.— (See Schrceder, Die Phcenizische Sprache, p. 173). 

(5) The name of the god Tan occurs in the composition of that of the 
Cretan Itanos, i-Tdn, "the island of Tan." The most ancient coins of this 
island (Mionnet, Descr. de Mid. ant [supplement], vol. IV., p. 324, No. 188) 
represent the god Tan as a personage with the tail of a fish, holding 



Appendices. 531 

And to Demarus was born Melcarthos {Metqarth), called also 
Heracles. 

Then, afterward : 

Heaven made war against Pontos, and associated Demarus with 
him as his ally, after having persuaded him to come over to his 
side. \) Demarus fell npon Pontos, but he fled; and Demarus 
vowed a sacrifice if he succeeded in escaping. 

The thirty-second year after he had possessed himself of the power. 
Cronos having taken his father. Heaven, in an ambush which he 
had prepared for him in the midst of the lands, and holding him 
henceforth in his power, cut away his sexual parts, in a place 
near springs and rivers, where henceforth the worship of heaven 
was established : his spirit then melted away, and in his mutilation 
his blood fell in drops into the water of the springs and rivers ; and 
the place where all this came to pass is yet pointed out. 

Such are the choice records given us of Cronos and his cotempo- 
raries, about whom the Hellenes make so much ado. calling this 
"the age of gold, the first age of men. endowed with speech." and 
boasting of the felicity of these ancient mortals as though theirs had 
been supreme beatitude. The writer goes on in the following strain : 

Astarte. the great l Ashihdrth K bir th , and Zeus Demarus 
(Bral-Thtrnar , and Adodoa [Sadod . king of the gods, reigned 
together over the country, by the decision of Cronos. »And Astarte 
placed on her own head, as the insignia of royalty, (the horns of) a 
bull's head. Wandering through the inhabited earth, she found a 
star fallen from heaven, lifted it up and consecrated it in the ss are I 
island of Tyre. And the Phoenicians say that this Astarte is 
Aphrodite. 

Cronos, in his turn, waniering through the inhabited earth, gave 
to his daughter. Athene, the kingdom of Attica. 

But a pestilence and a famine having c:>me to pass. Cronos sacri- 
ficed his only s?n - to his father, Heaven, circumcised himself, and 
obliged his companions to perform the same operation. 

And shortly after, another son, whom he had of Ehea, named 

Xeptane's trident: on the revers is represented the sea-monster tanmn 
3 i-21; Tdb, 12; Is. xxvii. 1), and its female. This is the "sea- 

ram'" of ^lian Hist -4 :' ?i.. ix. 49 : xv. 2), which Maary (Beo. Are 

series, vol. V.. p. 552 et seq.) has already pointed our as the animal :: the 
Phoenician Poseidon. 
f 1 ) I adopt in this place Bernays' correction, Kai ajnxmjcras ^.Tj^apovvra 

■zpo<TTi9erai. 

(r) His only legitimate son. 



532 The Beginnings of History. 

Muth {Muth, death, Hebrew mdveth), being dead, he deified him; 
his name in Phoenician signifies "death," and he is the same as 
Pluto. 

After that, Cronos gave Byblos to the goddess Baaltis (Ba'alth), 
who is also called Dione, Berytus to Poseidon, and Sidon to the 
Cabiri, who deified the remains of Pontos at Berytus. 

And before this, Taautos, after having invented the images of the 
gods according to their figures, that of Cronos, of Dagon, and the 
others, combined the sacred elements of writing. He contrived for 
Cronos the insignia of his royalty, four eyes before and behind, two 
of them being closed and at rest [when the other two are open], and 
on his shoulders four wings, two raised and two lowered. This was 
intended to explain symbolically that Cronos could see when sleep- 
ing, and slept awake ; in the same way, the position of his four 
wings showed that he flew while resting, and rested while flying. 
And to the other gods Taautos gave each one two wings on the 
shoulders, as following Cronos on his flight, besides bestowing upon 
this last two more wings on his head, one to express his spirit of 
command, the other his sensitive power. 

Cronos, coming to the land of the South, gave all Egypt to the 
god Taautos to be his kingdom. 

All that, he says, was put for the first time in writing by the seven 
sons of Sydyc, the Cabiri, with their eighth brother, Asclepios, in 
the order in which it had been given them by Taautos. And 
Thabion (Tdbiun), supposed to have been the first hierophant who 
lived in Phoenicia in remote antiquity, put these things into allego- 
ries, combining them with the physical and cosmical elements, and 
transmitted them to the chiefs of the sacred ceremonies and to the 
prophets who directed the initiations. And these having before all 
else a desire to increase their glory communicated them to their 
successors and disciples, one of whom was Eisiris (Isir=Osir), the in- 
ventor of the three letters^ 1 ) brother of Chna (Kena'an), surnamed 
Phoenix. 
And he adds, by way of epilogue :( 2 ) 

And the Greeks, who surpassed all men in ingenuity, appro- 
priated to themselves the greater part of these things, exaggerating 
them, and adding to them various ornaments, which they wove into 
this foundation in every style in order to charm by the elegance of 

(i) The grammatical triliterality of the Semitic languages. 
( 2 ) It is evident that these last remarks belong properly to Philo of By- 
blos, and not to the Phoenician Sanchoniathon. 



Appendices. 533 

the myths. Hence Hesiod and the famed cyclic poets drew their 
theogonies, their gigantomachies, their mutilations of the gods, and 
in hawking them about everywhere they have supplanted the true 
narrative. And our ears, accustomed to their fictions, familiar to 
us for several centuries past, guard as a precious deposit the fables 
which they received by tradition, as I remarked when I began to 
speak ; and, rooted by time, this belief has become so difficult to 
dislodge that to the greater number the truth appears like a story 
told for amusement, while the corruption of the tradition is looked 
upon as the truth itself. — (Euseb., Prozpar. evangel., I, 10; Sancho- 
niathon, pp. 24-40, ed. Orelli.) 

H. — Extract from the Book of Philo of Byblos " On the Jews." 

It was customary among the ancients, in seasons of great calami- 
ties and supreme dangers, for the head of the city or nation, in order 
that misfortune might be averted from the whole people, to immolate 
his best beloved son, as a ransom offered to divine vengeance. 
And they who were thus presented as victims were sacrificed with 
mysterious ceremonies. 

Cronos, therefore, whom the Phoenicians called El (El, II), king 
of the country, who subsequently, after his death, was deified in the 
planet Saturn, had an only son, born of a nymph of the country, 
known as Anobret^ 1 ) This son is called Ieoud ( Yehud, Hebrew, 
yahid), for this is the name in Phoenician for an only son. His 
country being in great peril in the course of a war, Cronos invested 
his son with the royal ornaments, raised an altar and immolated 
him thereon.— (Euseb., Prceparat. evangel., I., 10; Sanchon., p. 42, 
ed. Orelli.) 

I. — Another Version of this same Extract. 

The Phoenicians, in great calamities, brought on by wars, 
droughts and pestilences, sacrificed some of their best-loved chil- 
dren, vowing them to Cronos (Tl-Milich, the Moloch of the 'Ammon- 
ites). The history of the Phoenicians, written by Sanchoniathon in 
Phoenician, and translated into Greek by Philo of Byblos in eight 
books, is full of similar sacrifices. — (Porphyr., Be Abstin. Cam., 
II., 56.) 



(!) All the conjecture so far made in regard to the restoration of the 
original form of this name and its explanation seem to me inadmissible; 
though indeed I have no plausible substitute to make for them. 



VJ 



534 The Beginnings of History. 

J. — Extract on Cronos. 

The Phoenicians, guided by the similarity of the name, or by 
some allegory, told the story of Cronos in a different way, as may 
be gathered in the second book of Herennius Philo's Phoenician 
History. Their traditional history tells how he reigned over Li- 
bya^) and Sicily, as I explained above ;( 2 ) that he settled inhabitants 
there and founded cities, like the one of which Charax speaks, and 
which was at first called Cronia, and now Hierapolis, as Isigonos 
narrates in his book, On the Greek Gods, and Polemon, and Eschy- 
lus in his tragedy of Etna. — (Fragment of the fourth book of the 
treatise Of the Months, by John Laurentios, the Lydian, published 
by Hase on p. 274 of the treatise De Ostentis, by the same author.) 

K. — Another Extract on Cronos. 

The Phoenicians say that this god (Cronos) shared in the role of 
a demiurge. Just as the demon which is favorable to us guards our 
life, not by descending into it, but by remaining exterior to it, in 
the same way Cronos is charged with the supremacy of the world, 
without having been its creator, but in the character of guardian 
and benefactor of the world, as he who leads to its completion the 
life of the universe and of the demiurge himself. It is thus that 
Cronos is honored with the title of demiurge, the power which 
makes the demiurgic work effective appearing in him. — (Extract 
from the second part [unedited] of Damascius' treatise, On First 
Principles, Creuzer, Meletemata, vol. I., p. 45; Ch.-Em. Euelle:ie 
Philosophe Damascius, p. 105.) 

L. — Extract upon the Dominion of Cronos. 
The Phoenicians say that Zeus (Ba'al or Habba'al) was the most 
just of the kings, so that his glory exceeded that of Cronos. And 
they relate that he drove Cronos from the kingship, which signifies 
that he got the better of time and the oblivion which follows in its 
train.( 3 )— Johan. Laurent. Lyd., De Mens, IV., 48.) 

M— Extract from the Book of Philo of Byblos " On the Jews." 
Taautos (Taut), whom the Egyptians call Thoyth, glorified for 
his wisdom among the Phoenicians, was the first to arrange the sci- 

(!) Where he becomes Ba'al 'Hammdn. 
■ (2) This passage is lost. 

( 3 ) Allegorical explanation which savors of the Greek of the decadence 
and has nothing in it of Oriental ideas. 



Appendices. 535 

ence of divine things and the worship of the gods in a scientific 
manner, instead of leaving it to the ignorance of the vulgar herd. 
After many generations, he was followed by the god Surmubelos 
(Shumru-JBa'al, " the command of Ba'al ") and the goddess Thu.ro 
( jTMro,=Hebrew Thordh, "the Law"), called also Chusarthis 
(Iltisharth, "harmony"), who illumined the mysterious theology 
of Taautos, so surcharged with allegory. — (Euseb., Prceparat. evan- 
gel., L, 10; Sanchoniathion, p. 42, ed. Orelli.) 

N. — Extract from the Book of Philo of Byblos '' On Phoenician 
Letters:' 

The same (Philo of Byblos), translating the book of Sanchonia- 
thon, On Phoenician Letters, makes the following remarks on rep- 
tiles and venomous animals, which are of no use to men, but commu- 
nicate perdition and death to them by stinging them with their cruel 
and incurable venom. He writes of them as follows : 

Taautos deified the nature of the dragon and of serpents, and 
subsequent to him the Phoenicians and Egyptians followed his ex- 
ample. For they considered this animal as being of all reptiles the 
most possessed with the spiritual breath^ 1 ) and the most fiery. And 
this spiritual breath it is which gives it a rapidity of motion impos- 
sible to surpass, though it has neither feet nor hands, nor any of the 
exterior members with the help of which the other animals move 
about. And the serpent assumes the most varied forms, advancing 
with spiral motions towards the goal he aims at. He is likewise the 
longest-lived of all creatures, not only because in casting off the 
outside coat of his age he grows young again, but because he attains 
to a growth beyond that of any other animal. And when he has 
accomplished the term decreed for him, he swallows himself, as 
Taautos has recorded in the sacred writings. Therefore it is that 
this animal occupies his place in the sacred ceremonies and in the 
mysteries. It is explained more at length in the books entitled, On 
the Celestial Signs,(' z ) that the serpent is immortal and absorbs him- 
self, as was just said, for this animal does not die a natural death, but 

(!) Cf. Genes., iii., 1 : " The serpent was subtle above all the beasts of 
the field which Yahveh Elohim had made." 

( 2 ) Ilepi e0u>0(W. The sdJiOia. are manifestly the celestial signs, tthuth, 
Hebrew, Othdth, as the a^^ouvea, whose mysterious writings Sanohonia- 
thon is said to have consulted in order to write his cosmogony (Euseb. 
Prceparat. Evanqel.,1., 6; Sanchoniathon, p. 6, ed. Orelli), are the hammdni?)} 
or sacred stelas of the temples. 



536 The Beginnings of History. 

only when he is struck. The Phoenicians, also, call him Agathocle- 
mon.l 1 ) — Euseb., Prceparat. evangel., I., 10; Sanchoniathon, p. 44, 
ed. Orelli.) 

0. — Extracts on the Cosmogomic Character of the Number Seven. 

The Chaldseans called this god (Dionysos) Iao, signifying intelli- 
gible light, and in the language of the Phoenicians he is frequently 
named Sabaoth, as he who is above the seven heavens, or the demi- 
urge.( 2 )— Joh. Laurent. Lyd., Be Mens., IV., 38.) 

Sabaoth the demiurge, for it is by this word that the demiurgic 
number is expressed in Phoenician. — (Joh. Laurent. Lyd., Be Mens., 
IV., 98. 

It was the gods themselves who communicated the fact that the 
septenary as intelligent number existed after the ternary. Orpheus 
taught it as well as the Pythagoreans and the Phoenicians, the last 
in their mythology representing Cronos as supplied with seven 
heads. — (Damasc, Be prim, prlncip., fragm. ined. ap. Ch.-Em. 
Ruelle, Le philosophe Bamascius, p. 100. 

( J ) We may suppose that under this name is concealed the designations 
of Maldk-Ba'al, or "Angel of Ba'al," the third person, or the divine son of 
the Phoenician triads, to whom Philippe Berger has dedicated an im- 
portant memoir: L'Ange d' Astarte in La Faculte de theologie prostestante de 
Paris a M. Edouard Beuss (Paris, 1879, gr. in 4°), pp. 37-55. This Maldk-Ba'al 
is identified with Hermes (See Fr. Lenormant, Gazette archceologique, 1876, 
p. 127 et seq.), himself assimilated with Agathodemon. One of his images 
is the nehushtdn, the Saving Serpent, whose image was lifted up by M6- 
sheh in the desert (Num. xxi , 6-9), and at a later date was broken by 
King TJizqiyah as idolatrous (2 Kings, xviii , 4). 

( 2 ) The Byzantine writer, absolutely ignorant of Semitic philology, has 
in this place seriously confounded the title of Yahveh elohe cebdoth, "Yah- 
veh, god of celestial armies," and the name of the number shebd, " sev- 
en." But his testimony, sullied as it is with error, is precious to retain. It 
proves, in fact, that in his very numerous and varied readings of authors, 
now lost, John Laurentios, the Lydian, found the expression of the 
cosmic and demiurgic idea connected by the Phoenicians with the num? 
ber seven. 



III. 

FRAGMENTS OF PHERECYDES' COSMOGONY. 



The fragments of the cosmogony of the philosopher Pherecydes 
of Syros, which have been handed down to us, belong just here. 
We are told, in fact, quite distinctly that Pherecydes composed 
his book in conformity with the mysterious writing of the Phoeni- 
cians, rd $oivin(.)V ctTz6K.pv(pa fiifiAia (iSuid., v. Qepsuvdng, Eudoc, 
Violar. ap. Villoison, Anecd. greec, vol. I., p. 425). And it is 
easy to perceive the exactness of this statement, and that his cos- 
mogony is not Hellenic, but Semitic, presenting, under a dis- 
guise of Greek names, a narration belonging to the same family 
as the cosmogonies of Sanchoniathon. 

Its restoration has already been attempted by : Sturz, Pherecydis 
fragmenta, 2d Ed. (1824), pp. 38-53; Commentatio de Pherecyde 
Syrio et Atheniensi, § 8 ; Preller, in the Rheinisches Museum fur 
Philologie, new series, vol. IV., p. 377 et seq. ; J. L. Jacobi, 
Ueber die Fragmente des Pherecydes bei den Kirchenvsetern, in the 
Theologische Studien of Ullmann & Umbreit, vol. I. (1851), p. 197 
et seq. ; Maury, Histoire des religions de la Grece antique, vol. III., 
pp. 249-255. 

It is difficult to fix the precise epoch of the philosopher of Syros. 
The date varies from the 35th (Suid., s. v. Qepenvdng) to the 59th 
Olympiad (Theopomp. ap. Diogen. Laert. , I., 116; see Sturz, 
Comment, de Pherecyd., $ 2; Preller, Rhein. Mus., new series, vol. 
IV., p. 377), in the contradictory testimony handed down to us 
by the ancients. His work passed for the first which, among the 
Greeks, was written in prose (Suid., s. v. ; Strab., I., p. 18; Eus- 
tath. ad Iliad., A, p. 9 ; Plin., Hist, nat., VII., 56 ; Isidor., Orig., 
I., 37 ; see Sturz, Comment., \ 4). The title of this work and its 
division into books is thus indicated by Suidas : 

A. All that Pherecydes has written is included in his Hep- 
tamychos, or Theocrasia, or Theogony ; this is a theological work 

537 



VJ 



538 The Beginnings of History. 

in ten books, containing the generations and succession of the 
gods.^) — Cf. Eudoc, Violar. ap. Villoison, Anecd. grsec, vol. L, 
p. 425. 

Maximus of Tyre [Dissert., x. , 4) summarizes thus the essential 
features of the cosmogonic narrative with which it opened : 

B. To see the poetic narration of Pherecydes with Zes and 
Chthonia, and Love produced in them, then the birth of Ophio- 
neus, the combat of the gods, the tree and the peplos. 

Here we have three different phases symbolized : 
1st. The production of the universe; 
2d. The primordial cosmic struggle, which brings about 
3d. The final organization of the universe. 
The distinction of these three phases furnishes us with a logical 
classification of the fragments. 

I. 

C. Pherecydes makes of him who lives eternally (Zes), of 
Chronos (Time), and of Chthonia, the first three principles, the 
first preceding the two others and the two coming after the one. 
Then Chronos generates fire, breath and water ; that is to say, 
as I understand it, the triple nature of the intelligible, whence 
proceed the innumerable generations of the gods, divided into 
five folds (uvxoi), known as 7T£vt£/uvxo(; or the quintuple world. — 
(Damasc, De prim, princip., 124, p. 304, ed. Kopp.) 

D. Pherecydes says that the first principles are Zes, Chthonia 
and Cronos, Zes being the ether, Chthonia the earth, and Cronos 
time ; the ether is the active principle, the earth the passive 
principle, and time that in which all is produced. — (Hermias, 
Irris. gentil. philosoph., 12.) 

E. Lucretius recognizes the fact that the world had a triple 

origin Pherecydes is of the same opinion, but 

admits different elements, Zes, Chthonia and Cronos ; in other 
words, fire, earth and time, adding that fiery ether governs the 
earth, the earth governs time, in which all is regulated. — Prob. 
ad Virgil., Eclog., vi., 31.) 

The opening sentences of the book in which these first princi- 
ples were enounced have been preserved for us verbatim by 
Diogenes Laertes : 

0) Evidently in this place SiaSoxovs should be corrected to StaSoxas, to 
make good sense. 



Appendices. 539 

F, Zeus was first, and Chronos (time) always the same, and 
Chthonia. Afterward Chthonia took the name of Ge (earth), 
when Zeus had given his honor (yepag) to her. — (Diogen. Laert., 
I.-, 119.) 

Zeus, for whom Pherecydes used the peculiar form Zes (Eus- 
tath. ad Odyss., A, p. 1387), explained by Hermias to signify 
ether, by Probus fiery ether, or fire, and qualified by Damascius 
as He who lives eternally, by means of a play of words on Z^c 
and Cov, which doubtless may be traced back to the philosopher 
himself, corresponds exactly to the Breath {Ruah) of the first 
cosmogony of Sanchoniathon. Aristotle give3 a more philosophi- 
cal and spiritual form to this, but the same idea recurs : 

G. Those among the ancients who mixed these things together 
(philosophic truths and fables) say this without recourse to the 
myths, as Pherecyde3 and others, who say that the first existing 
was the sovereign good, the Magians also, and, among later sages, 
Empedocles and Anaxagoras affirm that the first principle was, 
according to the one, the attraction of love (folia), according to 
the other, mind. — (Aristotle, Metaphysic, N, 4.) 

It is true that we also have : 

H. Zeus is the Sun, according to Pherecydes. — (Joh. Laurent. 
Lyd., DeMens.,-IY., 3.) 

But it is evident that here the Byzantine writer, to whom we 
owe this information, has confounded the Sun with the fiery 
principle, the cause of life and motion, or at least that what he 
says does not refer to cosmogonic beginnings. For if Pherecydes 
could have identified Zes with the Sun, it could only have been 
at a later epoch, in recognizing the fact that in a world once 
definitively organized this first principle of life locates itself 
permanently in the orb of day. 

In Sanchoniathon' s first cosmogony the Breath falls in love 
with his own principles, and this is the starting-point of the 
birth of the universe. Pherecydes expresses the same idea under 
a somewhat different form : 

i". Pherecydes says that Zeus transformed himself into Eros in 
order to accomplish his demiurgic labor. For he brought into 
concord and true harmony the world composed of contrary ele- 
ments, sowing therein that accord and union which govern all 
things. ■— (Procl., In Tim., III., p. 156.) 



540 The Beginnings of History. 

The original state of the dyad which succeeded the primor- 
dial monad was, according to Pherecydes, essentially chaotic, a 
state of unrest and full of antagonisms, before the demiurgic 
work : 

J. The ancients saw the dyad in matter and its diversity. 
Pherecydes, too, called this dyad Daring (r<5/\p;), others Impulse 
(opjuf/) or Opinion (dot-a), because opinion is a mixture of the 
true and the false. In fact, matter yields to all, is unstable and 
changes into a thousand forms, suffering ill and bearing pain, 
because in its nature it is divisible and separable. — (Johan. Lau- 
rent. Lyd., Be Mens., II., 6.) 

The material and passive principle of Pherecydes' cosmogony 
over which Zes, the active and spiritual principle, broods, is 
Chthonia. We have seen how Hermias and Probus define it as 
the earth. Sextus Empiricus does the same thing : 

K. Pherecydes of Syros says that the earth was the principle 
of all things ; Thales of Miletus says the same of water ; Anaxi- 
mander, his disciple, that it was the infinite ; Anaximenes and 
Diogenes of Apollonia, the air ; Hippasos of Metapontus, fire and 
water ; Xenophanes of Colophon, earth and water ; (Enopides of 
Chios, fire and air ; Hippo of Rhegion, fire and water ; Onomacri- 
tus, in his Orphics, fire, water and earth ; and, lastly, Empedocles 
and the Stoics, fire, air, water and earth. — (Sext. Empir., Pyrrho- 
nian. hypolypos., III., 4, p. 126, ed. Bekker.) 

But this is negatived by the very phrase at the opening of Phe- 
recydes' book, as preserved to us by Diogenes Laertes. (F) In 
reality, Chthonia is the moist and chaotic matter in which the 
\J elements of earth and water are still mingled. And it is thus 

that a series of testimonies may be explained which at first glance 
seem absolutely to contradict those that have just been given : 

L. Thales of Miletus and Pherecydes of Syros accept water as 
the first principle of all things. And Pherecydes calls it Chaos, 
drawing this term, as it would appear, from Hesiod (Theogon., v., 
116), who says : " Before all else there was Chaos." In fact, the 
philosopher, referring x^ to tne verD X £ ~ l(y 6ah "to be poured, 
to flow," applies this name to the element of water. — (Achill. Tat., 
Isagog. in Arat. Fhsenom., 3, p. 123, ed. Petav.) 



Appendices. 541 

M. The poet calls the sea "ancient" because it was the first 
of the elements, according to Pherecydes and Thales. — Tzetz. ad 
Lycophr., Cassandr., v. 145 ; cf. Favorin., v. M/vaiav ddAaooav.) 

iV. Pherecydes of Syros and Thales of Miletus affirm that 
water was the beginning of all things, adopting the saying of 
Hesiod. — (Schol. ad Hesiod., Theogon., v. 116.) 

According to the expressions of fragment F itself, it is only 
after the demiurgic operation that Chthonia becomes Ge, or 
the earth, in the proper sense, " when Zeus has given her her 
honor." And Grotius (Be veritat. relig. Christ., I., 16, p. 27 of the 
Amsterdam ed., 1709 [p. 10 ed. London, 1679. Tr.]), Tiedemann 
(Griechenlands erste Philosophen, p. 172), and Sturz (Pherecyd. frag- 
ment., p. 40 et seq.) have perfectly understood that what is meant 
by these enigmatic terms is the creative work attributed to the 
third day in Genesis i. 9 and 10, and defined, after saying that 
the dry land and the waters were separated under the heavens, by 
the words : " Elohim named the dry [land] earth and he named 
the gathering of the waters sea." 

In truth, dating from the work of the demiurge, Zes, trans- 
formed into Eros, the primitive unity of Chthonia resolves itself 
into the duality of earth and ocean, the two constituent parts of 
the terrestrial world, to which Pherecydes gave the names of Ge 
and Ogen (Clem. Alex., Stromat.,YI., [cap. II.] p. 264, ed. Sylburg 
[ed. Migne, vol. II., p. 220. Tr.]). On the use of the ancient 
expression Ogen, instead of Ocean, see again Tzetz. ad Lycophr. , 
Cassandr., v. 231. 

At the same time that this demiurgic production is taking 
place in the womb of. Chthonia by the operation of Zes, Chronos 
begets the three celestial elements, fire, breath and water (C). 
Thus is constituted the quintuple world (irevTiKO(j/j.og) with its five 
folds (fivxoi) ; wherefore it is called TTEvre/uvxog. 

Porphyry gives a refined explanation to this expression of 
fj.v;(OL, which must be taken rather as expressing his ideas than 
those of Pherecydes himself : 

O. The symbol of nature having everywhere a double entrance, 
the poet (Homer) correctly depicts the grotto (of the nymphs) 
as having two gates instead of one, two gates really dif- 
ferent ; for one is for the gods and goods, the other for men 
and gods. And Plato starts from this point to become acquainted 



542 The Beginnings of History. 

with craters, only using pithos instead of amphorae, and two 
openings instead of two gates. As to Pherecydes of Syros, he 
speaks of folds (fivxot), of gulfs, of grottos, of gates and of en- 
trances, symbolizing thus the births and deceases of animated 
beings. — (Porphyr., De Antr. Nymph., 31.) 

This is justified, moreover, in part by the fact that Pherecydes 
made his five folds of the world correspond to five families of 
cosmic and elementary gods. ( G) We know only the names of 
three among them, the Cronides, the Ophionides (T) and the 
Ogenides (Hesych, s.v. 'Qyf/v.). 

Pherecydes' book bears the title of 'EtrTa/uvxog, as we have 
seen, which indicates that the philosopher, besides the five ele- 
ments, counted two cosmic folds, making seven in all. These 
two must correspond to Chthonia and to Chronos, in whom Zes 
operated. 

II. 

Unfortunately nothing has come down to us of the myth of the 
birth of Ophioneus, who, according to Maximus of Tyre, suc- 
ceeded in Pherecydes' cosmogony to Love awakened in the bosom 
of Zes and of Chthonia. (B) 

The remains which we possess treat only of the war of the 
gods, the recital of which follows upon the other always, accord- 
ing to Maximus of Tyre. The antagonistic actors in this war 
were Ophioneus, or Ophion, and Cronos, who should not be con- 
founded with the primordial Chronos, reckoned in the number of 
the primordial principles of the universe : 

P. The conception of the Satan (of the Jews) is, moreover, 
taken from ancient myths ill understood, relating to a divine war 
\j spoken of in the old traditions. Heraclitus alludes to it when he 
writes : "It must be known that there is an universal war, that 
discord performs the office of justice, and according to its laws 
all things are born and perish." And Pherecydes, older by far 
than Heraclitus, represents in a myth two inimical armies, one 
having Cronos as its chief, the other Ophioneus, and recounts 
their challenges, their combats, and the agreement made that the 
party cast into the Ogen should acknowledge itself vanquished, 
while the other party which should have cast the first down should 
come into possession of heaven as the reward of its victory. — 
(Cels. op. Origen., Adv. Cels., VI., p. 303 [ed. Paris, p. 663, 664; 
ed. Migne, I., p. 1359 et. seq. Tr.]). 



Appendices. 543 

The following testimony alludes to the victory gained in this 
struggle : 

Q. Pherecydes records that Saturn gained over all the rest 
the triumphal crown. — (Tertullian, De Coron. Mil., cap. VII., p. 
531, ed. Froben.) 

Ophion, or Ophioneus, becomes, with the poets of the decadence, 
one of the giants struck by Jupiter with a thunderbolt (Claudian, 
De rapt. Proserp., III., v. 348). But the history of his quarrel 
with Cronos was peculiar to Pherecydes alone. We are also 
correct in adding to the fragments of the philosopher of Syros 
some passages which describe this quarrel and complete the 
account of Celsus. There is no manner of doubt that it was all 
originally taken from Pherecydes : 

R. Before Cronos and Rhea, Ophion and Eurynome, the 
daughter of the Ocean, reigned over the gods who were called 
Titans. Afterwards, Cronos having vanquished Ophion, Rhea 
having overcome Eurynome in a struggle and precipitated her 
into Tartarus, they reigned over the gods. Zeus, in his turn, 
having flung them into Tartarus, possessed himself of the power 
exercised by Cronos and Rhea before him. But they having 
been preceded by Ophion and Eurynome, the poet is correct in 
speaking of Zeus as sovereign over the kingdom of Ophion and 
Eurynome. — (Tzetz. ad Lycophr., Cassandr.,\. 1191.) 

S. He (Orpheus) sang how that Ophion and the Oceanide 
Eurynome in the beginning exercised the dominion on the 
snowy Olympus ; how, deprived of their honors through violence, 
he by the hands of Cronos, she by those of Rhea, they fell into 
the billows of the Ocean ; how Cronos and Rhea reigned over the 
Titans, fortunate gods, as long as Zeus, still a child and his mind 
capable only of childish things, dwelt in the cave of Dicte, before 
the Cyclops, sons of the Earth, had armed him with the bolt, the 
lightning and the thunder. — (Apollon. Rhod., Argonaut., I., v. 
503-511.) 

In placing this in the mouth of Orpheus, the poet seems to 
indicate that some of the branches of Orphism had adopted this 
account borrowed from Pherecydes. 

Nonnos of Panopolis {Dionysiac, II., v. 573) makes Zeus say in 
derision to Typhon, whom he has just struck with his thunder- 



544 The Beginnings of History. 

bolt: "Now, cause to ascend out of Tartarus into the ether 
Ophion and Eurynome on one side, Cronos on the other, hence- 
forth reconciled by thy care." 

As may be seen, the combat of Ophion, or Ophioneus, and of 
Cronos, in Pherecydes' account, corresponded to that of Heaven 
and Cronos in the great epic narrative of Byblos, which has been 
preserved to us among the fragments of Sanchoniathon. (II., G) 
With Nonnos, it is "the old Ophion," yepuv 'O0/g>j>, who wrote in 
red letters (ypa.fiy.a-L $olvik6svtl ; doubtless the poet misunderstood 
a reading which referred to "Phoenician letters") all the des- 
tinies of the world in the orbits of the planets (Nonn., Dionysiac, 
XLL, v. 351 et seq.), a rendering borrowed undoubtedly from 
Pherecydes; the oracle of the stars is an "oracle of Ophion," 
'Ofyi.ovir] biHpr/ (Dionysiac, XLL, v. 899); astrology, "the art of 
Ophion," 'Oncovin rsxvn (Dionysiac, XLL, v. 362). All this 
clearly shows this personage to be a synonym of Uranos. And 
for this reason Nicomachus of Gerasa (ap. Phot., Biblioth., 187, 
p. 143, ed. Bekker) says that the numeric triad was called Ophion, 
because he, like the sky, included within himself the three celes- 
tial elements. 

"The Phoenicians," says Macrobius (Saturn., I., 9), "wishing to 
symbolize the world, that is to say, heaven, in their sacred 
images, represent a serpent entwined in a circle and biting his 
tail, by way of showing that the world feeds upon itself and turns 
upon itself." Varro (De ling, lat., V., 10 [ed. Miiller, 1833, $57. 
Tr.]) says likewise: "The first among the gods are the Heaven 
and the Earth, called by the Egyptians Serapis and Iris, by the 
Phoenicians, Taautes and Astarte." It is evident that here the 
Latin writer, unfamiliar with the Phoenician, deceived by a simi- 
larity in sound, confounded the name of the god, adopted from 
Egypt, Taut, the divine type of the hierogrammaton, who never 
could have been an Uranic personification, with the word tit, one 
of the names of the serpent, emblem of heaven. And to justify 
the use which we make of these two passages, it will suffice to 
call to mind that Eusebius, after quoting the fragment trans- 
lated from Sanchoniathon by Philo of Byblos, on the symbolic 
character of the serpent among the Phoenicians, which we have 
recorded above (II., iV), adds : 

T. Pherecydes, making the Phoenicians his starting-point, gives 
a theological dissertation on the god whom he calls Ophioneus and 



Appendices. 545 

on the Ophionides, of whom we will speak farther on.( x ) And it 
is with the same thought that the Egyptians, when they symbolize 
the universe, draw a circle, painted the color of the air (blue), and 
strewn with flames, having in its midst a serpent with the head of a 
sparrow-hawk, extended horizontally, the whole forming our letter 
theta. The circle represents the world, and the serpent, which, in 
its centre, unites its two extremities, the good genius. — (Euseb., 
Prcepar. evangel., I., 10 ; Sanchoniath., p. 46, ed. Orelli.) 

But if the Ophioneus or Ophion of Pherecydes, like the Uranos 
of the Sanchoniathon of Philo of Byblos, represents the heaven, it 
is the primordial heaven of the universe in its newly-made and 
imperfectly organized condition, wherein still reigns the spirit of 
discord, of hostility and of darkness. Order may not succeed to 
its confused and troubled state until after a struggle, in which it 
becomes the antagonist of the gods, who represent the progress of 
the world toward a perfect condition. Anu, who corresponds to 
Uranus in the Euphratic mythology, appears in the same character 
in the curious Chaldseo-Babylonian poem, the existing fragment of 
which is recorded a little above, under No. I., I. The account refers 
to the earliest age of the world. Heaven has already been created, 
with its stars, and Anu presides over them ; but their motions are 
not yet regular, and the Seven Evil Spirits, sons of Anu, constantly 
carry confusion among them. Ea and Bel, whose names the Greeks 
translated Cronos and Zeus, resolve to put an end to this state 
of things. They establish Shin (the Moon), Shamash (the Sun), 
and Ishtar (the planet Venus), in the government of the stars, so 
that they shall henceforth be compelled to follow regular orbits. 
But the seven sons of. Anu endeavor to put obstacles in the way 
of the institution of this new order of things. They fall upon Shin, 
to whom the Chaldgeo-Babylonians attributed the primacy among 
the celestial luminaries, in order to prevent his fulfillment of his 
mission. Shamash and Ishtar abandon their companion, who is 
eclipsed, and plant themselves beside Anu, who does not take part in 
the struggle, but is present as a spectator, favorable to the adver- 
saries of the lunar god. It is necessary, finally, in order to bring 
the struggle to a conclusion, that Ea-Cronos should interfere, and 
send his son Marduk, the champion of the gods, to deliver Shin, 
by hurling the seven sons of Anu into the abyss. 

(i) Eusebius does not again refer to the Ophionides; but this whole 
passage is an extract from either Phiio of Byblos or Porphyry. 

35 



\J 



546 The Beginnings of History. 

All this helps us to understand how the serpent Uranos, or Ophion 
fought against by Cronos in the account borrowed from Phoenicia 
by Pherecydes, becomes the serpent-tempter of the third chapter of 
Genesis; how the name hdndhdsk hdqadmoni, corresponding exactly 
to yepuv 'Ofiiuv, is an appellation of Satan among the Jewish Eab- 
bins (Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, vol. I., pp. 822, 823, 825- 
827, 833, 834, 837), and is reproduced in the Spaauv 6 uh/ac, 6 66ig 
6 apxctiog of the Apocalypse (xii. 9; xx. 2), conquered by the Arch- 
angel Michael and chained in the abyss. And to make sure that 
Ndhdsh qadmun is really an ancient name of Phoenician mytholo- 
gy, the same indeed that Pherecydes translated as yepcov 'Ofocov or 
'OcpiwvEvg, we must first refer to the beginning of the epic narrative 
of Byblos (II., G), preserved in the fragments of the Sanchoniathon 
of Philo of Byblos, in which it says that Uranos was likewise called 
Epigeios or Autochthon, in other words Adam qadmun, and after 
that to the Hellenized myth, in which Cadmos ( Qadmun) and his 
spouse Harmonia, grown old, metamorphose themselves into serpents 
(Apollodor., III., 1, 1 ; 4, 1 et seq., 5, 4; cf. Pindar, Olymp., II., v. 
141 ; Schol. ad Pindar, Pytli., III., v. 153 and 167 ; Strab., I., p. 
46; VII., p. 326; Pausan., IX., 5, 1; Hygin., Fab., 6; Ovid, 
Ifetamorph., III., v. 98; IV., v. 375). 

In this last account, the spouse of the " ancient Serpent" (Cadmos 
=Qadmun is called 6 iralaiOQ, the translation of his name in Clem. 
Alex., Stromal. , VI., p. 267, ed. Sylburg [cap. II.; ed. Migne, vol. 
II., p. 241 et seq. Tr.] ) is given a name which expresses the idea 
of a certain principle of order existing already in the still imperfect 
creation over which both preside. The same idea is suggested by 
the name of Eurynome, which Pherecydes gives to the spouse of 
Ophioneus. This name had, in fact, been already used, before his 
time, to designate an Oceanide, whom Homer mentions as receiving, 
with Thetis, Hephaistos, driven from Olympus by Hera {Iliad, 2, 
v. 393), and whom, as Hesiod tells us {Theogon., v. 908; cf. Orph., 
Hymn lix. [lx.], v. 2), Zeus made the mother of the Charites. 
Pausanias introduces to us the plastic form under which the 
Greeks of the remote ages of antiquity represented this Eurynome 
(VIII., 41, 4) : "About twelve stadia above Phigalia are baths of hot 
water, near the confluence of the Lymax with the Neda. At the 
very confluence is the sanctuary of Eurynome, sacred from the 
earliest times, and difficult of access on account of the roughness of 
the place. The Phigalians believe that Eurynome is a surname of 
Artemis; but those amon? them who have studied the documents 



Appendices. 547 

of antiquity say that she is a daughter of Oceanos, of whom Homer 
makes mention in the Iliad, as having, with Thetis, received He- 
phaistos. Once a year, on a certain day, the temple of Eurynome, 
which is closed the rest of the time, is opened, and public and private 
sacrifices are offered there. I was not able to reach therein time for 
the feast-day, therefore I did not see the statue of Eurynome. But 
I learned from the inhabitants of Phigalia that the xoanon is bound 
with golden chains, and that it represents the figure of a woman 
down to the springing of the thighs, terminating from that point 
in a fish. This fish naturally agrees very well with the idea of an 
Oceanide, who dwells in the bottom of the sea with Thetis. But 
such a form has no apparent applicability to the character of 
Artemis." 

It is not improbable that Pherecydes may have adopted the name 
of Eurynome, found in Homer and Hesiod, on account of its asso- 
nance, though imperfect, with the appellation of the Phoenician 
goddess ' Ashtar-No'ema, who is said by Proclus to have been regarded 
as mother of the gods in Phoenicia, and in connection with whom he 
related, in his Life of Isidor (ap. Phot. Biblioth., 242, p. 352, ed. 
Bekker), a mythological story, which seems to have originated at 
Sidon. Sadycos (Qaduq) had sons called Dioscuri or Cabiri {Ka- 
birim). The eighth of these was Esmunos {Eshmun), translated 
Asclepios. He was the most beautiful and charming person that ever 
was seen, and, as the fable tells us, inspired Astronome, the Phoenician 
goddess, mother of the gods, with a violent passion. While hunting 
in these coppices one day, as was his habit, he saw the goddess fol- 
low him, and, on his flight, pursue him, but just as she was about 
to seize him he mutilated himself with a blow of his axe. She, 
overcome with grief, having called to her succor Paian (Ruphe), 
reanimated the young man with her vivifying heat, and made a 
god of him, and the Phoenicians called him Esmunos, "from the 
burning heat (esh hamun) of life." In the Chronicon Pascale (vol. 
I., p. 66, Bonn edition), this 'Ashtar No'ema appears as Astynome, 
of the island of Asteria, daughter of Cronos, who, uniting with 
Aphraos, becomes the mother of Aphrodite. 

III. 

In the cosmogony of Pherecydes, as well as in the Phoenician 
epic narratives handed down by Sanchoniathon (II., L), the reign of 
Zeus succeeded that of Cronos. But we cannot tell whether with 
Pherecydes this change in the government of the universe, marking 



548 The Beginnings of History. 

a new advance in the constitution of the universe, was brought 
about, as in Greek mythology, and with the Phoenician author 
translated into Greek by Philo of Byblos, in consequence of a new 
divine war similar to that of Cronos against Ophioneus, and 
whether Zeus deposed Cronos by violence. 

In any case, the Zeus who assumed after Cronos the dominion over 
all things was then no longer, as at the beginning of the cosmogony, 
the first principle of the universe. By an evolution out of himself, 
after having first transformed himself into Eros in order to create 
the elements of the world, he became the last demiurge, who com- 
pleted the work of creation, and the monarch of this creation defi- 
nitely organized. He was thus the alpha and the omega of the system 
of divine generations. And the philosopher of Syros had faithfully 
preserved in this wise the idea, fundamental in the religions of Asia 
Minor, of the god who begets himself, reproducing himself eternally 
under younger form, in a son identical with his original. In the 
fragments of Sanchoniathon (II., G), it is the second Cronos, homo- 
nym of the first, his father, the solar Ba'al succeeding the Ba'al- 
ethdn, or Bo'l-athen, " Ba'al the ancient," who is identified with 
Il-Cronos (Damasc. ap. Phot., Biblioth., 242, p. 343, ed. Bekker), the 
Bel-Marduk, last demiurge and preserver of the good order of the 
world, indefatigable and ever wakeful adversary of the evil demons, 
that the Chaldseo- Assyrian mythology places a generation after Bel 
labiru (in Accadian Elim uara), " Bel the ancient." With this mani- 
festation of Zeus under a new aspect is evidently connected the in- 
formation already noted by us above (II), taken from Pherecydes by 
John Laurentios, the Lydian. 

The final completion of the demiurgic work, which marked the 
coming of the new Zeus to power, was presented in the accounts of 
\ j Pherecydes, under a symbolic form indicated by Maximus of Tyre 
(B), when he speaks of "the tree and the peplos," as the last epi- 
sode of the cosmogony. 

These expressions are explained by other testimony : 

U. What the winged oak and the embroidered veil that covers 
it over are,— all things that Pherecydes has put in allegory in his 
theology, drawing them from the prophecy of Cham.— (Isidor. 
Basilidian. ap. Clem. Alex., Stromat., VI., p. 272, ed. Sylburg. [cap- 
VI.,; eel. Migne, vol. II., p. 276. Tr.]) 

The mention of " the prophecy of Cham" is an addition belonging 
to the system of the son of Basilides. But it does not injure the value 



Appendices. 549 



of the information to which it is added. This is, in fact, not only con- 
firmed by Maximus of Tyre, but also by a direct loan made by 
Clemens Alexandrinus from the work of Pherecydes : 

V. Zes made a great and magnificent veil on which are embroidered 
the earth, the ogen, and the dwellings of Ogen. — (Clem. Alex., Stru- 
mat., VI., p. 264, ed. Sylburg, [Cap. II.; ed. Migne, vol. II. p. 220 ]). 

This magnificent veil, on which is the figure of the universe in 
all its dazzling variety, Nonnos of Panopolis (Dionysiac, xli., 
v. 294-302) represents Harmonia, "the mother of all things" 
(ira/nfif/Top [1. 276]), as weaving in her palace. We have already 
quoted from Nonnos notices of Ophion, which originated with Pher- 
ecydes. This, then, must have been the same thing as the cosmic 
peplos, and therefore I feel j ustified in introducing in this place the 
description the poet gives of it : 

W. Bent above Athene's cunning loom, Harmonia wove a peplos 
with the shuttle; in the stuff which she wove, she first represented 
the earth with its omphalos in the centre ; around the earth she 
spread out the sphere of heaven, varied by the figures of the stars. 
She harmoniously accompanied the earth with the sea that is asso- 
ciated with it, and she painted thereon the rivers, under their 
image of bulls with men's faces furnished with horns. Lastly, all 
along the exterior edge of the well- woven vestment she represented 
the Ocean in a circle enveloping the Universe in its course. 

Thus, the universe definitively organized by Zeus, with the assist- 
ance of Harmonia, was depicted by Pherecydes as an immense tree, 
furnished with wings to promote its rotatory motion, a tree whose 
roots were plunged into the abyss, and whose extended branches 
sustained the unfolded veil of the firmament decorated with the 
types of all terrestrial and celestial forms. We have already spoken 
of this symbolic conception, which suggests a splendid image of the 
universe as a whole (p. 105 iV.). 

Pausanias (II., 1, 7) says that at Gabala in Syria a sacred peplos 
was preserved, a symbolic image of the cosmic veil, in the Temple 
of Doto, a goddess whose name is simply an Aramaic synonym 
(clolho, "the Law") of the Phtenician name of Thoro, which we 
find given in the fragments of Sanchoniathon (II., 31.), as one of 
the appellations of Husharth-Harmonia. 

The traveler adds that this peplos is that which the Hellenes 
say belonged to Eriphyle. In truth, the cosmic peplos played an 
important part in the Grseco-Phoenician fables about Europa and 
the family of Cadmos. They tell how it was given by Zeus to Europa 



550 The Beginnings of History. 

as a bridal present, and afterwards presented by the latter to Har- 
monia, on the occasion of her union with Cadmos ; later again, it 
appears, together with the fatal necklace, among the ornaments 
which decide Eriphyle to betray the secret of her spouse, Amphia- 
raos (Apollodor., III., 4, 2; 6, 2; 7, 5; Diod. Sic, IV., 65 and 66). 
The sons of Phegeus afterwards dedicated the ornaments of Eriphyle 
in the temple of Delphi (Apollodor., III., 7, 6), whence they were 
stolen (Pausan., IX., 41, 2), and the necklace carried to Amathonte 
in Crete, at the same time that the peplos was taken to Gabala. 

We must now recall the fact that the hierogamy of Zeus and 
Europa was annually celebrated at Gortyna in Crete, or, in other 
words, of Ba'al, the bull, and of 'Ashtharth, the tauropole, 
Phoenician importations (Boettiger, Ideen zur Kunstmythologie, vol. 
I., p. 307 et seq.; Hoeck, Kreta, vol. I., p. 53 et seq.; Welckef, uber 
eine Kretische Colonie in Theben, die Gcettin Europa und Kadmos 
der Koznig, p. 1 et seq.; Movers, Die Phcenizier, vol. I., p. 509), be- 
side a sacred plantain (Theophrast., Hist, plant, I., 15; Plin., Hist. 
nat., xii., 11; cf. Varr., De re rust., I., 7, 6), having the precise 
character of a Kena'anite Asherah, a vegetable simulacrum of the 
goddess herself. On the silver coins of this city (Ch. Lenormant, 
Nonv. galerie mythologique, pi. ix., Nos. 14 and 15 ; Overbeck, Grie- 
chische Kunstmythologie, vol. I.; Munztafel, vi., Nos. 2-7 ; Overbeck 
has dedicated an excellent commentary to the impression of these 
coins: work cited, vol. I., p. 445 et seq.). Europa is represented 
seated between the branches of the plantain, waiting for her divine 
spouse, who is figured by a bull on the reverse of the coin. Several 
copies show us, besides, the symbolic peplos, which, with a gesture 
of her arm, Europa unfurls over her head amid the branches of the 
\j tree. 

This entirely confirms, I think, what I said above (p. 96 et seq ), 
that in the conceptions of the Semites and Kena'anites of Asia 
Minor, the cosmic tree, identical with the tree of life, is confounded 
with the budding asMrdh, the sacred image of the feminine and 
Chthonian divinity, of which the celestial and solar male deity is 
the spouse, the goddess residing in the asMrdh, just as the male god 
resides in the sacred stone, Mth-il or hammdm. The asherah, which 
is made artificially that it may be worshiped, is the figure and 
representation of the cosmic tree. 



Appendices. 551 



IV. * 

But all the cosmogonic struggles did not end with the accession 
of Zeus to the dominion. The power of darkness and of disorder 
did not yet acknowledge itself as finally overcome. It attempted 
once more to take possession of the universe, and to destroy therein 
the new order which the god had established. Hence a new divine 
war, a repetition of that carried on by Cronos against Ophioneus, a 
war in which Zeus fights with a new Ophion, the youngest born of 
the Ophionides, similar in form to him who formerly ruled the 
world, but much more unmitigatedly wicked, having become com- 
pletely and utterly the enemy, the representative of the evil prin- 
ciple. I speak now of the struggle of Zeus against Typhon, Typhaon 
or Typhosus, the personification at once of the burning whirlwind 
which overwhelms the atmosphere and the volcanic fires which con- 
vulse the earth. This fable is undoubtedly of Syro-Phoenician 
origin, and in the religions of these countries held a place corres- 
ponding to that of the Gigantomachy in the Hellenic myths, properly 
so called. At an early day it penetrated into Greece through Asia 
Minor, coming from the peculiarly Aramaic countries. We have 
two plain proofs of this, the first residing in the fact that the oldest 
mention which appears to exist of the combat of Zeus and Typhon, 
in the Homeric poems (Iliad, B, v. 782 et seq. ; cf. Strab., XIII., p. 
626), fixes the abode of this monster among the Aramaeans, ev 'Apiftoig 
(the Latin poets have manufactured from this the island of Inarime : 
Virgil, JEneid, ix., v. 716; Ovid, Metamorphoses, xiv., v. 89). The 
second proof may be found in the name of Typhon or Typhaon 
itself, derived from a Semitic type, Tephon or Tilphon, an Aramaic 
form corresponding to the Phoenician Qephun, which we are familiar 
with through the Bible. The later poets make Typhon dwell in 
Cilicia (Pindar, Pyth., viii., v. 21 ; iEsehyl., Prometh., v. 351), in 
other words, still in a Phoenician country. Typhon is invariably 
represented as an ophiomorphic being, or at least as anguipede (see 
the stamp on the coins of Seleucia of the Calycadnos in Cilicia, 
Eckhel, Doctr. num. vet., vol. III., p. 66; the painted vase pub- 
lished by Gerhard, Auserlesene Vasenbilder, vol. III., pi. ccxxxvii.j 
and several other analogous ones, the list of which is given by 
Overbeck, Ghnechische Kunstmythologie, vol. I., p. 394 et seq., and 
by Heydemann, Zeus im Gigantenkampf, p. 14). The two names 
of Typhon (Strab., XVI., p. 750) and of Dracon or Ophites 



VJ 



552 The Beginnings of History. 

(Eustath. ad Dionys., Perieges, v. 919; Johan. Malal.,VIII., p. 197, 
Bonn edition) are also given as synonymous appellations of the river 
Orontes in Syria. 

Before Pherecydes, Homer had already sung in his Iliad the 
victory of Zeus over Typhon, and Hesiod had given an important 
place in his Theogony to the history of the monster Typhoeus, father 
of the wind Typhaon, and of all the family of mythological monsters, 
of his attempt to seize upon the dominion of heaven and the universe 
by dethroning Zeus, and of his being crushed beneath the hurling 
thunderbolts. The philosopher of Syros included in his book this 
cosmogonic myth likewise, though doubtless preserving more dis- 
tinctly its Phoenician physiognomy than we have received it. 

X. Pherecydes relates in his Theogony, that Typhon, pursued by 
Zeus, fled to the Caucasus, and that, this mountain having been set 
on fire by the thunderbolt, he sought refuge in Italy, where the 
island of Pithecusa was cast upon him. — (Schol. ad Apollon. Ehod. 
Argonaut., II., v. 1214.) 

The mention of the Theogony proves that this is borrowed from 
Pherecydes of Syros, whose book is sometimes mentioned by this 
name, and not from the historian, Pherecydes of Athens, among 
whose remains it is ordinarily included. For the work of this last 
is invariably designated by the names 'laropiac or 'Apxaio?.oyia. 

It seems to me, moreover, that it is possible to draw from this sen- 
tence only one exact meaning : that the philosopher of Syros had in- 
cluded the history of Typhon in his Theogony or 'Enra/Livxog . For 
the rest, the information of the scholiast must be at third or fourth 
hand, and furthermore it is evident that it is greatly corrupted. 
The belief that Typhon is buried under the island of iEnaria or 
Pithecusa, off the coast of Campania, does not appear until quite 
late (Virgil, ix., v. 716; Serv. a. h. I.), and cannot be found either 
in the records of Pherecydes of Syros, or even Pherecydes of Athens, 
for it did not exist in the time of either writer. It is the last step in 
a gradual shifting of the theatre of this legend in an westward 
direction (Schol. ad Pindar., Olymp., iv., v. 11; Pyth. I., v. 31), 
localized at first, as regards European countries, in Boeotia (Hesiod, 
Scut. Hercul.,\. 32; Tzetz. ad Lycophr; Cassandr.,r. 177), after- 
wards under Etna, as was generally conceded at the period of Pindar 
and the Tragic poets (^schyl., Prometh., v. 361 et seq. ; Pindar, 
Pyth., i., v. 29 et seq. ; cf. Ovid, Heroid., xv., v. 11 ; Fast., iv. 7 v. 
491). 
The narrative of Apollonios of Ehodes itself, in connection with 



Appendices. 553 



which the scholiast wrote the sentence which we have just trans- 
lated, seems to correspond better with what must have been the true 
reading of the philosopher of Syros. We have already proved from 
the history of Ophion and Eurynome an adoption more or less direct 
of the cosmogonic narratives of Pherecydes, made by Apollonios of 
Rhodes : 

Y. In such wise does the immortal and ever-wakeful serpent (the 
guardian of the golden fleece), which the Earth herself produced in 
the escarpments of the Caucasus, contort itself there where the rock 
of Typhon is, where, as the saying goes, Typhon, struck by thunder 
by Zeus Cronides, when he directed against him his hostile hands, 
spread the burning blood of his head ; and thence having traversed 
the mountain and the plain of Nysa, he now lies buried under the 
waters of the Serbonian Lake. — Apollon. Rhod., {Argonaut. II., v. 
1212-1219.) 

Herodotus (III., 5) is also acquainted with the local tradition 
which describes Typhon as swallowed up in the abyss of the Ser- 
bonian Lake, and there exactly is located a mountain called Nysa, the 
Arabian Nysa, mentioned in one of the hymns of the Homeric col- 
lection (xxvi., v. 5 et seq. ; cf. Diod. Sic. III., 65), as situated upon 
the frontier of Egypt. But it is not natural to represent a personage 
smitten by thunder upon Caucasus, and falling from this mountain 
into the lake in the vicinity of Pelusium. Apollodorus (I, 6, 3), 
mentions Casion as the mountain where Zeus smote Typhon with 
thunder, and Casion is the mountain which commands the Serbo- 
nian Lake. Casion is really the name that Pherecydes must have 
used, and which his copyists or persons making extracts from his 
writings altered as early as the time of Apollonios, making it into 
Caucasus. This mountain was, in fact, the point where the 
Phoenician fable was localized, and the Rock of Typhon is undoubt- 
edly the rock of Casion, whereon rose the Sanctuary, called by the 
Egyptian hieroglyphic documents Bd'li Zapuna, the Ba'al Cephon 
of the itinerary of the Hebrews at the Exodus (Exod. xiv., 2 and 9 ; 
Num. xxxiii., 7), according to the ingenious restoration of that 
itinerary by Brugsch. ( Transactions of the Second Session of the Inter- 
national Congress of Orientalists, held in London [1874], p. 278 ; His- 
tory of Egypt under the Pharaohs, translation of Danby Seymour 
and Ph. Smith, vol. II. , p. 363). Mount Casion itself owes its name 
to this tradition, for the Zeus Casios worshiped there (Strab. xvi., 
p. 760; Pliny, Hist. Nat., v., 12, 14), the Qagiu of the Aramaic in- 
scription (De Vogue, Syrie Centrale, Inscriptions 



VJ 



554 The Beginnings of History. 

Haouran, No. 5; Nabatsean texts, No. 4) is the god who casts him- 
self from heaven to earth in the form of a thunderbolt or aerolite 
(Fr. Lenormant, Lettres assyriologigues, vol. II., p. 119). 

Apollodorus (I, 6, 3), relates that on Casion, Typhon, though 
wounded by Zeus' thunderbolt, entangled the god in his serpents' 
coils, and succeeded in depriving him of the sinews of his arms and 
legs, which left the Master of Olympus without strength, and 
assured the temporary domination of Typhon over the universe, 
until Zeus should have succeeded in recovering his sinews. This 
curious story in which the sinews of the king of the gods symbolize 
the bonds which maintain the harmony of the universe constitutes 
the Phoenician fable, properly speaking, of the struggle of Ba'al 
and Qephou. Nonnos, who has collected so many myths of Phoe- 
nicia, and particularly, as we have seen, several of those that were 
adopted by Pherecydes, worked this one out curiously in the first 
canto of his Dionysiacs : 

Zeus deprived by Typhon of his thunderbolt, and the javelin 
which had been the weapon of his father Cronos before him, at the 
same time that the monster tore from him his sinews, calls Cadmos 
to his succour. He promises the Syrian hero, should he succeed in 
restoring to him his strength and his weapons, to proclaim him the 
Saviour and restorer of the harmony of the Universe, and, as such, 
to give him Harmonia as his wife. Cadmos undertakes this enter- 
prise, and sets out for the country of the Arimes. Disguised 
as a shepherd, he presents himself playing upon the flute before 
the grotto where Typhon dwells, and where he has hidden the 
sinews of Zeus. Charmed by the sounds of the instrument, the 
monster issues forth from his cavern, and Cadmos flees at the sight 
of him. But Typhon calls to him, reassures him, and asks him to 
stop and to continue his music. A conversation takes place be- 
tween them, and Cadmos says that the sound of his flute is nothing, 
that he will make him hear music far more beautiful if Typhon 
will give him threads to restring his lyre, which have been broken 
by the thunder of the Olympians. Typhon allows himself to be de- 
ceived by these words, and gives Cadmos the sinews of Zeus to 
serve as strings for his lyre. Cadmos seizes them eagerly, and flees 
with the utmost precipitation to carry them to Zeus, who thus re- 
covers his strength, and after that is able to fight against his enemy 
and conquer him. 

The sound of the flute here is a symbol of the cosmic harmony, 
and " Typhon listens without being able to understand it." (Nonn. 



Appendices. 555 

Dionysiac, I., v. 520), and Pindar (Pyth. I., v. 31) is faithful to the 
sanie symbolism, when he represents the Cilician monster as an 
enemy of music. This fact gives us an insight into the particular 
myth travestied by Euhemerus, when he pretended that Harmonia 
was a flute-player and Cadmos a cook (Athen. xiv., p. 658). 

As early as the thirty-third Olympiad, the cyclic poet Pisander 
sang the intervention of Cadmos as the auxiliary and counsellor of 
Zeus in his struggle with Typhon (Olympiador. ad Plat. Phced., 
p. 251). All that Nonnos here attributes to the son of Agenor, 
Apollodorus places (I, 6, 3) under the name of Hermes. In the 
same way, on the Apulian vase, published by Heydeman (Zeus im 
Gigantenkampf, Halle, 1876), it is Hermes who performs the oflice 
of charioteer to the car in which Zeus is mounted, armed with the 
thunderbolt, by means of which he cast the serpent-footed Typhceus 
into the sea, crushing down his head with the rock of the island 
of Pithecusa, or Etna, while the wind Typhaon attempts in vain to 
protect him by blowing violently. 

Such a substitution shows plainly, what is moreover evident to any 
sensible person, that the Cadmos here referred to has nothing in 
common with the Nahdsh qadmun, but is Qadmun understood as 
the synonym of QadmiU, he who stands before the god, who walks 
in front of him, his minister, his messenger, his angel. The ex- 
pression corresponds with that of maldk, the importance of which is 
recognized in the theological language of the Syro-Phcenician re- 
ligions, standing equally high in that of the Bible. Qadmun, Qad- 
miU, Maldk, are appellations bestowed indifferently upon the divine 
son of the Phoenician Triads, the angel and minister of his father. 
Cadmos, indeed, plays the part of a genuine Maldk Ba'al when he 
is sent out into the world in search of his sister, Europa, by his 
father, Agenor, whose name is simply a Greek translation of Pa'al 
(Movers, Die Phoenizier, vol. II., first part, p. 131). In his quality 
of Maldk, the divine son of the Phoenician Triads is frequently 
assimilated with Hermes (Fr. Lenormant, Gazette Archeologique, 
1876, p. 127, etseq.), whence his appellations of Qadmun and Qadmiel 
were, at an early day, very naturally identified with the Greek ap- 
pellations Kadyog and Kadullog (Movers, Pie Phosnizier, vol. I., p. 
500-502, and 513-522; Article Phcenizien in Ersch and Gruber's 
Encyclopedia, p. 394), for Kdayog (noa/uog) and Kacullog, which were 
names of the Pelasgic Hermes, regarded as the author of the order 
of the world, and its upholder (Freret, Mem. de I! Acad, des Inscrip. 
first series, vol. XXVII., p. 18 ; Welcker, Kretische Kolonie in 



556 The Beginnings of History. 

Theben, p. 23, et seq; Griechische Gcetterlehre, vol. I., p. 330; Fr. 
Lenormant, article Cabiri, in Daremberg and Saglio's Dictionnaire 
des Antiquites, p. 760). 

Each year there were offered at Tyre quails in sacrifice to Heracles 
(Melqarth), in memory of this god's having been slain by Typhon, 
during his expedition into Libya, and resuscitated by his companion 
Iolaos, who made him inhale the odor of a quail, (Eudox. ap. Athen. 
ix., p. 392; Eustath. ad Odyss., p. 1702). Melqarth-Hercules, the 
great god of Tyre, the King of the City, is here substituted for Ba'ak 
Zeus as antagonist of Typhon, which we also find in Virgil (JEneid, 
viii., v. 298) ; and Iolaos renders him a service, almost analogous to 
that which Cadmos renders to Zeus. Now, Iolaos appears in Poly- 
bius as the divine son in the Carthaginian Triad (A. Maury in Guig- 
niaut, Religions de Vantiquite, vol. II., p. 1040; Fr. Lenormant, 
Gazette archeologique, 1876, p. 126), and the Punic inscriptions 
make mention of a god Y61 (Fr. Lenormant, Gazette arcMologique, 
1876, p. 127), the signification of whose name is an exact synonym 
of Qadmwi, Qadmitt and Maldk. Thus we are justified in our in- 
terpretation of the Phoenician myth, accepted by the philosopher of 
Syros. 

His work naturally concluded with the last struggle which assured 
to Zeus the maintenance of definitive and harmonious order estab- 
lished by him in the universe. If any matter followed the account 
of the combat of Zeus and Typhon, it must have consisted merely 
in genealogies of the gods. It constituted, so to speak, a cosmogony 
and theogony, not a mythological history. Sturz (Pherecydis frag- 
menta, 2d Ed., Leipzig, 1824), Matthige (De Pherecydis fragmentis, 
Altenburg, 1814, reproduced in F. A. Wolf's Analecta literaria, 
vol. I., 2d Part, p. 321-331), and C. Muller (Fragmenta Mstoricorum 
grcecorum, vol. I., p. xxxiv-xxxvi., and 70-99), have settled the fact 
that all the fragments of the last named nature which have been 
preserved to us by later writers under the name of Pherecydes should 
be attributed to the historian Pherecydes of Athens, and not to 
Pherecydes of Syros. The ingenious observations of Maury (His- 
toire des religions de la Grece, vol. III., p. 252-255), upon the very 
advanced development of the fables of Phoenician origin, retain 
all their value ; but this value could not result in attributing, with 
the learned Academician, the fragments to which it refers to the old 
philosopher of Syros. 

The work of the son of Badys must, moreover, have been very 
short, and when Suidas says that there were ten books in all, he is 



Appendices. 557 

undoubtedly mistaken. He mixes it up with the 'laroplat or 
' Apx<uoAoyia of Pherecydes the Athenian, to which all witnesses 
agree in attributing ten books. 

The garb of Hellenic names ascribed to all the personages is so 
transparent in this cosmogony of Pherecydes, and so little disguises 
the absolutely Phoenician character of the conceptions, that as it 
seems to me the original Semitic cosmogony of which this is the trans- 
lationmay be restored with an almost entire certainty. And this 
I have attempted to do in the pages that follow : 

In the beginning were Yahveh (He who lives), (^ Bdhu (feminine 
Chaos), and 'Ulom (Time). 

And Yahveh, who was breath (ruah), made himself into desire 
(hipeg), to operate the creative work in the womb of Bdhu. 

And Bdhu became earth (ereg) when Yahveh had accorded her 
honor to her, and the sea (yam) was separated from the dry land. 

And 'Ulom begat the three celestial elements, fire (esh), breath 
(ruah), and water (mem). 

Thus were produced the seven orders (haldim)( 2 ) of the universe, 
and from each of these issued a numerous progeny of gods. 

(!) The interpretation of Damascius, " He who lives eternally," (G) com- 
pels this restoration and appears to prove the reasonableness of Movers' 
supposition (Die Phxnizier, vol. I., p. 545 et seq.), that of Sehlottmann (Das 
Buck Hiob, pp. 78 and 134), and that of (Ehler (article Jehova, in the Real- 
Encyclopedie of Herzog, vol. VI., p. 457 [1st Ed.] ), that the Phoenician god 
whose name was transcribed into Greek 'law (Macrob., Saturn, I., 18) and 
'Ieuw (Sanchoniathon, p. 2, ed. Orelli; extract of Philo of Byblos by Euse- 
bius: Prceparat. evangel., I.. 9), was really called Yahveh instead of Yahveh. 
However, this last name, which was that of the god of the Hebrews, and 
which, formed upon the same type, implies a more spiritualistic concep- 
tion, was used among the Aramaeans at least as well as among the Israel- 
ites, as proved by the appellations, known by means of the cuneiform 
inscriptions, of a king of Hamath sometimes called Yahu-bld and some- 
times Ilu-bid, and of a king of Dammeseq named Yahlu, a contraction 
of Yahu-ilu (Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament [1st Ed.], 
p. 3 et seq.). 

( 2 ) The word heled is well known in the religious philosophy of the 
Semitic and Kena'anite peoples (Movers, Die Phoenizier, vol. I., p. 262 
Renan, Mem. de V Acad, des Inscriptions, new series, vol. XXIII., 2d Part, 
p. 258). Like '61dm, of which it is the synonym, it signifies at once "time 
generation," " the world," and " creation, order of creatures." The great 
god of Gaza was called Ba'al haldlm, whence Zei>? 'AAS^ios in Greek 
(Etymol. Magn., v. 'AASr^ios). Ttiis expression it is, to the exclusion of 
any other, which might and should be translated by the Greek m u X°s> 
and it may be readily understood thus, if we recall the meaning, "hollow 
out, hide in the depths," with which the root hdlad is invested in 
Aramaic. 



558 The Beginnings of History. 

The ancient Serpent {Nahdsh qadmun = Ophioneus), with his 
spouse, 'Ashthar-No'emdth (?) (Eurynome), reigned first over the 
world. 

And it was this ancient Serpent who wrote in Phoenician letters 
the destinies of the universe in the orbits of the planets. 

And II (Cronos) declared war against the Serpent, and they 
agreed that the one of them who should cast the other into the sea 
should have the dominion over the heavens and the earth. 

And II vanquished the Serpent, as his spouse, Ammd (Rhea) 
triumphed over ' Ashthar-No' emdth (?), and they reigned after their 
victory. 

Yahveh begat himself, and he resolved himself into the solar 
Ba'al (Zens). 

And Ba'al reigned over the universe subsequently to II. 

Ba'al planted a blooming and winged asherdth in the world, and 
over its branches he stretched a magnificent veil (masdk), whereon 
the earth, the sea and the heavenly mansions were embroidered. 

And this magnificent veil was woven by Husharth (Harmonia). 

And later Ba'al gave this veil to ' Ashtharih-Qamhn (?) (Europa), 
when he united himself with her. 

TSutCephun, the enemy, the being in the form of a serpent, desired 
to dethrone Ba'al and possess himself of the dominion of the uni- 
verse, that he might carry trouble and disorder into it. 

And he surprised Ba'al, enfolded him in his serpents' coils, and 
tore the sinews (shdrun) of his arms and legs from him. 

Ba'al remained stretched out without strength, and as though he 
were dead. 

And he sent his maldk, Qadmun, thither where Cephun had his 
\J abode, to recover his sinews. 

Qadmun assumed the aspect of a shepherd, and went and played 
the flute (abub) at the 'entrance of the grotto which Cephun 
inhabited. 

And the monster came forth, drawn by the music, and he began 
to talk with Qadmun. 

And he told him that he would produce a much sweeter harmony 
if he could hav^e strings for his kinnor, which Ba'al had broken. 

And Cephun, deceived by this stratagem, gave him the sinews of 
Ba'al, in order to make strings for his kinnor. 

Qadmun fled instantly, with rapidity, and carried back the 
sinews to Ba'al. 



Appendices. 559 

And Ba'al, recovering his strength, arose and hurled thunder- 
bolts at (Jeplvun on Mount Qagiun, in the place which is still called 
JBa'al- Qephun. 

And (JephiLn, struck down by the thunder, was cast beneath the 
waters of the sea of reeds (yam suph). 

Then Ba'al rewarded Qadmun by giving him Husharth for wife. 

This restoration is simply a conjecture, and as such I give it ; 
but it does appear to me to possess a certain air of probability. 



APPENDIX IP 

ANTEDILUVIAN DIVINE REVELATIONS AMONG THE CHALDiEANS. 



A. In the beginning, there was at Babylon a multitude of men 
of a strange race, who had colonized Chaldsea, and they lived 
without rules, after the manner of animals. But in the first year 
[of the world], appeared issuing forth from the Erythraean sea, 
in that portion of it which borders upon Babylonia, an animal 
gifted with reason, who was called Oannes. This monster had 
the perfect body of a fish, but above his fish's head a second head 
which was that of a man, with a man's feet coming out from his 
tail, and human speech ; his image is still preserved. The animal 
in question passed the whole day among men, taking no nourish- 
ment whatsoever, teaching them letters, science and the principles 
of all the arts, the rules for the foundation of towns, for the con- 
struction of temples, for the measure and boundaries of lands, the 
sowing-times and the harvests, in fine everything that softens man- 
ners and constitutes civilization, to such an extent that since that 
time no one has invented aught else that is new. Then at sunset 
this monstrous Oannes would retire into the sea, and pass the night 
in the midst of the great waste of waters, for he was amphibious. 
Subsequently there appeared still other animals like him, which 
the author promises to enumerate in the history of the Kings. He 
adds that Oannes wrote a book on the origin of things, and the 
rules of civilization, which he bequeathed to men. (Beros. ap. 
Euseb., Chron, armen. [I., 2, 2 and 3. Tr.], p. 9, ed. Mai; Syncell., 
p. 28; fragm. 1, of my edition.) 



VJ 



560 The Beginnings of History. 

B. The Assyrians say that among them was born (as first man) 
Iannes the Ichthyophagus. — (Pindar, ap. Origen.sew Hippolyt. 
Philosophumen., V., 7; p. 97, ed. Miller.) 

The mythological legend of Chaldsea was handed down to the 
poet of Thebes through the naively euhemeristic stories told by 
the Greek merchants who traveled through the east. The Ich- 
thyomorphous god is transformed by them into an Ichthyopha- 
gous man. It may, however, be proper in this place to correct 
lxdvo<pdyov to lxdvo<j>6pov as proposed by Sathas (Bulletin de corres- 
pondance helUnique, vol. I., p. 202.) 

C. Euahanes, who was said to have issued from the sea in Chal- 
dsea, made known astrological interpretations. — (Hygin., Fab., 274.) 

D. He (Helladios of Besa, or Antinoe) relates the fable of a 
man named Oes, who came out of the Erythraean sea, having the 
perfect body of a fish, with the head, feet and arms of man, and 
who taught astronomy and letters. Some said that he had come 
out of the primordial egg, whence his name, and that he was al- 
together a man, but resembled a fish, having dressed himself in 
the skin of a whale.— (Hellad. ap. Phot. Biblioth., 279, p. 535, ed. 
Bekker.) 

E. As to myself, having consulted the works of the wise Che- 
remon, a most worthy man and very learned historian, I found in 
them that science among the Chaldseans preceded that of the Egyp- 
tians, though the first were not the instructors of the second, but 
that each nation claimed its own founders of learning. The Chal- 
deeans lie when they boast of having been the masters of the Egyp- 
tians, and this is the reason why : An extraordinary inundation 
of the Nile destroyed everything in Egypt, and especially all the 
books which had been written about astronomy. Then the Egyp- 
tians, finding it necessary to know beforehand about eclipses and 
conjunctions, requested the Chaldeeans to communicate to them 
the documents which contained the laws regulating them. But 
the latter, in their malice, changed the ciphers of the periods, al- 
tering the movements of the planets and fixed stars, contrary to the 
laws of nature, in the copies with which they furnished them. 
But subsequently the Egyptians, discovering that they could make 
no satisfactory use of the documents thus falsified, began to devote 
themselves to these questions, alone, and having arrived at the true 
knowledge of matters as they really are, they wrote out their ob- 



Appendices. 561 

servations on baked bricks, so that the fire could not consume them, 
nor the water of the inundations spoil them. 

Thus the Egyptians, from being in possession of a false science 
only, deceived as they had^been by the Chaldaeans, ended by reach- 
ing the goal through their own efforts. The first author of this 
science among them was the ancient Ninos, after whom the four- 
teenth was Ioannes, who came from the equatorial zone covered 
with the skin of a fish, and calling himself the son of Hermes and of 
Apollo. He possessed himself of the dominion by craft, having 
threatened them, if they would not give him the crown, with an 
eclipse of the moon, of the near approach of which he was aware, 
and which actually came to pass. Long after him reigned Proteus, 
and after him Eapsinitos, of whom the Egyptian fables relate that 
he descended alive into Hades, and returned thence after having 
played at dice with Demeter, and having won from her at this 
game a golden napkin. — (Michel Psellos, published by Sathas, 
Bulletin de correspondanqg helleniqite, vol. I., p. 129.) 

Nothing could be more curious than the way in which the pseudo- 
Cheremon to whom Psellos accords an absolute faith, transports in 
this place from Babylonia and Assyria into Egypt the custom of 
writing on tablets of clay baked in the fire, as well as the person- 
ages of Ninos and Cannes. And all this he grafts upon the records 
of the legendary history of Egypt, drawn from Herodotus. It is 
impossible to state the precise epoch of the transplantation of the 
myth of the fish-god, the revealer of Science and Civilization ; but 
it could only have been done at a very late epoch, by the adepts of 
sham Egyptian astrology, who set themselves up as rivals of the 
supporters of sham Chaldasan astrology, and attempted to appro- 
priate to themselves the fable to which the last-named attributed 
the origin of their false science. Moreover they made the god, in 
euhemeristic fashion, into a crafty astrologer, who profits by his 
science to take advantage of the ignorant populace and make him- 
self king, but who subsequently makes use of his power to civilize 
the people. However, in this sort of caricature of the ancient fable 
of Chaldsea, there are still left some of the essential traits of its 
model. This is also apparent in another fragment in which Psellos 
relates the same history, again according to the pseudo-Cheremon, 
and still making Egypt the theatre of his action : 

F. The Egyptians were ignorant of the first elements of divine 
things, and forever quarrelling among themselves, for they were 
distributed in independent demes. Then a man named Oannes, 



\J 



562 The Beginnings of History. 

seeing their ignorance, made them blush at this life of theirs, and 
reigned over them by a clever stratagem. Having studied the 
observations and calculation of eclipses, one day knowing that the 
time had arrived for the sun to be eclipsed, he attired himself in the 
skin of a fish, and coming to the Egyptians, reported himself to 
have been sent by his father Hermes. They, seeing his strange 
aspect, were frightened, and he said to them : "I come to you as a 
messenger of the divine anger, for the divinity is displeased because 
you are not settled under the authority of a prince. If you do not 
alter your conduct, and if you do not establish a King over you, the 
great luminary of day will be darkened for you." They, not be- 
lieving him, loaded the man with chains, with the intention of 
making him King should the menace of the divine anger be carried 
out, and of putting him to death should his announcement not be 
realized. The moon soon after coming before the sun and intercept- 
ing its rays, they instantly unbound Oannes, and besought him to 
appease the divinity on their behalf. He, feigning that he would 
bring about a prodigy, allowed himself to be persuaded, closed his 
lips like one possessed, and murmured something between his 
teeth, and thus gained his reward by causing the moon to be carried 
past the sun, leaving its disk free. This man it was who made 
them adore the stars, the celestial world, and certain solar and lunar 
powers which he imagined. — ( Quoted by Sathas, Bulletin de corres- 
pondance hellenique,vo\. I., p. 201.) 

See again the last quotation from Psellos, made in the same place 
by Sathas, after the Greek manuscript, 1182 of the National 
Library, fol. 300. 

These extracts show us that the myth of Oannes as "Ea the 
Fish," (Ea Khan in Accadian) the instructor of men, the authentic 
form of which is preserved in the fragments of Berossus, finally re- 
appeared among the astrologers of the decadence and the Byzantine 
writers. Unfortunately we do not possess as yet the Chaldseo- 
Assyrian original of this history. Sayce (Records of the past, 
vol. XI, p. 155 ; Babylonian literature, p. 25) has, as I think, 
correctly conjectured that a fragment of the popular song con- 
tained in Cuneif. Inscrip. of Western Asia, vol. II., pi. 16., 1. 
58-71, a-b, in the midst of a collection of others of the same nature, 
refers to the return of Oannes each evening to the waters of the 
"Persian Gulf. 



Appendices. 563 

In fact, it begins with these words : 

Ana me ilusunu ituru 

To the waters their god they have led back ; 

ana bit nadi iterub 

into the abode of (his) residence he has entered. 

After this, it refers to the mysterious wisdom (nimequ) of this 
god and of his teachings. But, short as it is, this text, with its 
double version, Accadian and Assyrian, is still very obscure. 

We will now pass on to the extracts of Berossus, which enume- 
rate the theophanies of personages similar to the first Oannes, 
issuing like him from the Erythraean Sea in the time of the differ- 
ent antediluvian kings, in order to complete and explain his reve- 
lations : 

G. He (Berossus) enumerates the kings of the Assyrians one 
after another in order, counting ten after Aloros (correct: Adoros), 
the first king, as far as Xisuthros, in whose time the great, first 
deluge came to pass, of which Moses also makes mention. He 
says that the entire length of time during which these kings 
governed was 120 sars, or 432,000 years. Then he says, in his 
own words : "After the death of Aloros (Adoros), his son Alapa- 
rus reigned three sars. After Alaparos, Almelon, a Chaldaean of 
the city of Pantibibla, thirteen sars. To Almelon succeeded Am- 
menon, likewise from Pantibibla for twelve sars. In his time a 
monster named Idotion issued again from the Erythraean sea with 
a form which was a mingling of man and fish. After him, Ame- 
galaros of Pantibibla reigned eighteen sars. Afterward the shep- 
herd Davonos, still of Pantibibla, occupied the throne for ten 
sars. During his reign, there again issued forth from the Ery- 
thraean sea four monsters likewise having the form of a man-fish. 
Later there reigned Edoranchos of Pantibibla during a period of 
eighteen sars. And under him appeared once more, emerging 
from the Erythraean sea, another being, a union of man and fish, 
called Odacon. And he says that all these monstrous personages 
explained in detail that which Oannes had taught briefly. — 
(Berossus, ap. Eusebius, Chron. Armen. [I., 1], p. 5, ed. Mai, 
Fragment 9 of my edition.) 

H. Berossus testifies that the first king was Aloros (correct to 
Adoros) of Babylon, a Chaldasan. He reigned ten sars, and his 
successors were Alaparos and Amelon of Pantibibla, than Ammenon 
the Chaldaean, in whose time it was related that Mysaros Oannes 



564 The Beginnings of History. 

(Ea musaru) l Annedotos, appeared, issuing from the Erythraean Sea ; 
he is the same whom Alexander (Polyhistor), anticipating the 
epoch predicated, speaks of as having manifested himself in the 
first year of the world, while Apollodorus says that the second 
Annedotus showed himself after forty sars, and Abydenus at the 
end of twenty-six sars. Afterwards, Megalaros, of the city of 
Pantibibla, reigned eighteen sars, and his successor, the shepherd 
Daonos of Pantibibla, ten sars. Under the last named, there again 
appeared issuing from the Erythrsean sea a fourth Annodotos 
with the same sort of figure as the others, a combination of man 
and fish. Next came Evedorachos of Pantibibla, who reigned 
eighteen sars, and during whose life a fourth (?) being, uniting 
the two natures of man and fish, and called Odacon, appeared on 
the shores of the Erythraean sea. All these beings explained in 
detail and chapter by chapter the things that Oannes had revealed 
in brief. Abydenus does not mention the last named. — (Beros. 
ap. Syncell., p. 39 ; Fragment 10 of my edition.) 

/. Extract from Abydenus upon the dominion of the Chaldreans. 
Here is sufficient evidence of the wisdom of the Chaldgeans. They 
say that the first King of this country was Aloros (corr. Adoros), 
and tradition relates that he was chosen shepherd of the people 
by the divinity himself: his reign lasted sixteen sars. Now, the 
sar contains 3600 years, the ner 600 and the soss 60. After him 
Alaparos governed for a period of three sars, then Amillaros of 
the city of Pantibibla for thirteen sars. It was during his reign 
that the second Annedotos, a demi-god, resembling Oannes in 
figure, appeared, issuing from the sea. Afterwards came Am- 
menon of Pantibibla who reigned twelve sars, then Megalaros of 
Pantibibla who reigned eighteen sars. The following reign was 
that of Daos, shepherd of Pantibibla, and lasted ten sars ; then it 
was that there came from the sea to the land four beings of double 
nature whose names are, Eneudotos, Eneugamos, Eneubulos, 
and Anementos. Afterwards under the succeeding monarch 
Evedoreschos, there appeared Anodaphos. After the last prince 
whom we have mentioned several others reigned, and finally 
Sisuthros, so that there may be counted ten Kings in all, and 
the duration of their power amounts altogether to 120 sars. — 
(Syncell., p. 38; Euseb., Chron. Armen. [I., 6], p. 22, ed. Mai; 
Fragment 11 of my edition of Berossus.) 

The very confused and at first sight wholly contradictory indi- 



Appendi 



ices. 



565 



cations which these fragments furnish in regard to the date of the 
appearance of the revelation-bearing theophanies, which were 
supposed to have been produced subsequent to the primordial 
apparition of Oannes, may be summarized in a synoptical table 
after the following fashion : 



Eeigns. 

Adoros 10 sars. 

Alaparos 13 sars 

Alnielon, ] 

or \ 13 sars. 
Amillaros J 



Ammenon...l2 sars 
Amegalaros.18 sars 



Daonos 10 sars. 

Edoranchos.18 sars. 



Fragment G.\ Fragment H. 



Motion 



Four 
men fish. 
Odacon. 



Annedotos, at the 
end of 26 sars (ac- 
cording to Abyde- 
nus), that is, in the 
last sar of the reign. 

Annedotos, at the 
end of 40 sars (ac- 
cording to Apollo- 
dorus), or in the 
2d sar of the reign. 
Fourth Annedotos 

Odacon. 



Fragment I. 



Annedotos. 



Four 
men fish. 
Odacon. 



It strikes me that the summary under this form gives us a 
clearer insight into the confused style of the extracts made from 
Berosms, and enables us to restore with almost absolute certainty 
the contents of his original text : 

1st. The primordial apparition of Oannes, "in the first year," 
coincided certainly with the accession of Adoros. It would appear 
to follow from the expressions of I that it was the god himself 
who installed him King, and this circumstance somewhat altered 
would have given rise to the little story of E and F. 

2d. The mention of the four men-fish who came under 
Daonos, in G and /, is fortunately replaced in // by that of the 
fourth Annedotos who then appeared. It must hence be con- 
cluded that there had been three other theophanies similar to, 
but later than that of Oannes under these preceding reigns. 

3d. In /, Annedotos, appearing under Amillaros, is not included 
in the list of these four fantastic personages ; the same may be 
said of the Idotion, who corresponds to him in G. 

These observations show that between Oannes and Odacon, or 
between the reigns of Adoros and Edoranchos, Berossus must have 



566 The Beginnings of History. 

reckoned as many appearances of men-fish, who were revealers 
and legislators, asof kings, so that it necessarily follows that one 
belongs to each reign. 

We may now remark that all the kings, to whose reigns are 
referred the supernatural revelations of the sacred books, are said 
to be natives of Pantibibla, or "the town of all the books." The 
same is true of Daonos, in whose time is placed the last revealer, 
Odacon. After him the revelations cease, and the kings no longer 
proceed from Pantibibla, but from that town called in the frag- 
ments of Berossus as we have them, Larancha or Lanchara, its 
true name being made known to us through the tablet of the 
Deluge under its original form of Shurippak. 

In regard to the restoration of the names, evidently very much 
changed, given to the different theophanies, the significance of 
which we have just studied, see some conjectures, which still re- 
quire careful verification and examination, in Fr. Lenormant, Die 
Magie und Wahrsagekumt der Chaldseer, p. 377 et seq. 



\J 



APPENDIX III. 

CLASSIC TEXTS ON THE ASTEONOMICAL SYSTEM OF THE 
CHALDEANS. 



A. The Chaldasans say that the nature of the world (matter) 
is eternal, that it had no beginning, and will never have an end. 
According to their philosophy, the order of the universe, the ar- 
rangement of nature are due to a divine providence ; nothing 
which is created in heaven is the result of chance ; everything 
comes to pass through the changeless and sovereign will of the 
gods. Having observed the stars for a vast number of years, 
they are more exactly acquainted than any other men with their 
course and influences, and predict with certainty many events in 
the future. The doctrine, which according to them is most im- 
portant, concerns the motions of the five stars, that we call 
planets, and they name interpreters. Among these stars they 
look upon as most significant the one which supplies the most 
numerous and important auguries, and that is the planet desig- 
nated by the Greeks as Cronos, which for that reason they call 
Helios (Sun). (*) 

As to the others, they, as well as our astrologers, give them 
the names of Mars, Venus, Mercury, and Jupiter. The Chal- 
dseans call them interpreters, because the planets being alone en- 
dowed with a determinate proper motion, as is not the case with 
the other stars, which are fixed and subjected to a regular and 
common march, interpret the benevolent designs of the gods to 

(!) This is the true reading, though it may seem a strange one at first 
sight. Simplicius (De Gxlo, II., p. 499) and Hygin. {Poet. Astron., II., 42), 
give the same rendering (see Th. H. Martin, Theonis Smyrncei Platonic* 
liber de astronomia, p. 88). The planet Saturn is also called in the sum- 
mary of Eudoxus' astronomy contained in a Greek papyrus of the Louvre, 
6 rod TjAiov acnrip (Notices et extraits de manuscrits, vol. XVIII. , [2d Part] 
p. 54). It is also called there <j>aiv<av, a name which may refer to its augural 

567 



568 The Beginnings of History. 

men. For skilled observers know, so they say, how to obtain 
presages from the rising, setting, and color of these orbs ; they 
likewise announce violent winds, rains, and excessive heat. The 
appearance of comets, eclipses of the sun and moon, earthquakes, 
in fine all the changes which come about in the atmosphere are 
so many signs of fortune or misfortune for countries and nations, 
as well as for kings and private individuals. 

Beneath (corr. above) the course of the five planets, continue 
the Chaldseans, are placed thirty [six] stars, called " counsellor 
gods." Half of these gods dwell above, the other half below the 
earth, in order to watch over human things and things celestial. 
And every ten days one of them is sent in the capacity of a mes- 
senger from the upper to the lower region ; another passes from 
this to that by an invariable exchange. Besides, there are twelve 
" lords of the gods," each one of whom presides over one month 
and one sign of the Zodiac. The sun, the moon, and the five 
planets pass through these signs, the sun accomplishing his revo- 
lution in the space of a year, and the moon hers in the space of a 
month. 

Each planet has its proper course, and they differ one from an- 
other in swiftness and the time of their revolutions. These orbs 
greatly influence the birth of men, and decide their good or evil 
destiny ; therefore it is that observers read the future in them. 
Thus, they say, have they made predictions to a great number of 
kings, among others to the conqueror of Darios, Alexander, and 
to the kings Antigone and Seleucos Nicator, predictions which 
appear to have been all fulfilled, and of which we shall speak in 
their time and place. They also predict to private individuals 
things which are to happen to them, and that with such precision 
that they who have tested them are struck with admiration, and 
regard the science of these astrologers as something divine. 

Outside the zodiacal circle, they distinguish twenty-four stars, 
half of them in the boreal and half in the austral portion of the 
heavens ; (*) the ones that can be seen are set over the living, 

(i) The twelve stars or constellations thus selected in the boreal hemi- 
sphere, in order to serve as p ints of departure for the division of the 
sphere, are astronomically the paranatellons of the signs, that is the 
stars which rise above the horizon simultaneously with each sign, so that 
the sphere was by that means divided into twelve segments cutting the 
aodiac obliquely and enclosing the paranatellons of each sign. The Baby- 
1 onian division of the nycthemer into twelve hours instead of twenty-four 
is connected with this mode of dividing the sphere. 



Appendices. 569 

■while the ones that cannot be seen are assigned to the dead ; and 
they call these stars "judges of the universe." 

The moon moves, add the Chaldeans, below all the other stars ; 
she is nearest the earth, by reason of her weight ; she executes 
her revolution in the shortest period of time, not on account of the 
swiftness of her motion, but because the circle which she describes 
is very small. Her light is borrowed, and her eclipses are occa- 
sioned by the shadow of the earth, as the Greeks likewise teach. 
As to the eclipses of the sun, they are able to give only very un- 
satisfactory and vague explanations of them ; they dare neither 
to predict them, nor to determine their epochs. 

They hold opinions peculiar to themselves in reference to the 
figure of the earth ; they aver that it is hollow, and boat-shaped,^) 
and they give numerous and plausible proofs of this, as in re- 
gard to all that they say about the universe. We should lengthen 
out our subject too much by entering into all these details ; it will 
suffice to be convinced that the Chaldeeans are versed in astrology 
beyond any other people, and that they have cultivated this science 
with especial care. However it is difficult to accept the number 
of years during which the college of the Chaldeans are said to 
have taught the science of the universe ; for beginning with their 
first observations, and ending with the coming of Alexander they 
reckon no less than four hundred and seventy-three thousand 
years.— (Diod. Sic, II., 30 and 31.) 

B. The Chaldceans appear to have brought the astronomical 
and genealogical art to greater perfection than any other people. 
By connecting terrestrial with celestial things, and heaven with 
the lower world, they have shown in this mutual sympathy of the 
parts of the universe, separated as to places, but not in themselves, 
the harmony which unites them by a kind of musical accord. 
They have conjectured that the world which comes under the ob- 
servation of the senses, is God either in itself, or at least by virtue 

(!) The hollow referred to here is underneath the earth which the 
Chaldreans thus compared to a bark upside down, but the bark in question 
would not be shaped like any that we are in the habit of calling by that 
name. The comparison is undoubtedly made with one of the perfectly 
round skiffs which it is still customary to use under the name of kufa, 
in the latitudes of the lower Euphrates and Tigris, and the representation 
of which we find upon the historic sculptures of the Assyrian palaces. 
We would explain such a shape to-day by comparing it with a bowl turned 
upside down. 



570 The Beginnings of History. 

of the universal soul -which vivifies it ; and in consecrating this 
soul under the name of destiny or necessity, they have blighted 
human life with a veritable atheism, for they have set forth the 
belief that phenomena have none other but visible causes, and that 
the good and evil of each individual depends upon the sun, the 
moon, and the course of the stars. — (Phil., De Migrat. Ahrahami, 
32.) 

C. The Chaldseans, having made a specialty of the study of as- 
tronomy, and referring everything to the movements of the stars, 
by which they believe that all things in the universe are governed, 
by the internal power of numbers and the connection of numbers 
among themselves, have glorified the visible essence, forgetting 
that which is invisible, but intelligible. And after having studied 
the laws of the order of visible things, the revolutions of the sun, 
of the moon, of the planets, and of the fixed stars, the changes of 
the seasons, of the years, and the close sympathy which unites 
things celestial with things terrestrial, they have come to believe 
that the world is God, confounding, in their error, the creator with 
the creature. — (Phil., De Abrahamo, 15.) 

See what the same writer says furthermore upon the same sub- 
j ect : Quis rer. divin. heres sit. 20. 

D. The Chaldseans, having observed the heaven more attentive- 
ly than other men, came at last to see the reason of the determin- 
ing causes of that which comes to pass in our midst, and to be- 
lieve that the twelve parts of the zodiac of fixed stars have a 
great part in it. And they divide each sign into thirty degrees, 
and each degree into sixty minutes, for thus it is that they call the 
least divisions which they do not divide again. They call a por- 

\J tion of the signs masculine, the others feminine. They distribute 
them likewise into signs with double bodies (Siaujua) and signs 
without, into tropic and non-tropic signs. The masculine and 
feminine signs are thus named in reference to their connection 
with the birth of male children. The ram is masculine, and the 
bull feminine, and all the others follow alternating. It is, I be- 
lieve, in imitation of this that the Pythagoreans call the monad 
masculine, the dyad feminine, and the triad, again, masculine, de- 
fining subsequently, according to the same rule, the nature of all 
numbers, odd and even. Some persons dividing each sign into 
dodecatemories, arrive almost at the same conclusion, for they 
make the Ram masculine, the Bull masculine and feminine, the 



Appendices. 571 

sign of the Twins masculine again, thus alternating two by two 
the other signs. They call those signs which are exactly opposite 
each other at the two extremities of a diameter of the circle, like 
the Archer [and Gemini], the Virgin and the Fishes, double- 
bodied ((ViGUfia) ; and the signs lose this name in respect to those 
with which they are not in the same relative position. As to the 
tropic signs, they are those in which the sun, when reaching them, 
works the great changes of his course. These are the Earn, mas- 
culine sign, and its diametrically opposite one, the Balances, the 
nature of which is similar, as also those of the two other tropic 
signs, Capricorn and Cancer. For the tropic position of the 
Spring Equinox is in the Earn, while that of the Winter Solstice 
is in Capricorn, that of the Summer Solstice in Cancer, and that 
of the Autumnal Equinox in the Balances. (Origin, seu Hippo- 
lyt. Philosophumen., V., 13 ; p. 125 et seq. ed. Miller. 



APPENDIX IV. 

TABLES OF THE CHALD^EO-ASSYRIAN CALENDAR AND OF THE 
OTHER, SEMITIC CALENDARS. 



The Tables grouped in this Appendix are six in number, and 
refer chiefly to chapters iv. and vi. of this work. They contain 
besides, a series of records of the history of Semitic Calendars, 
which have nowhere else been so completely brought together. 

The first table gives the list of the months of the Assyro-Baby- 
lonian year, excepting the epochs of intercalation, with their As- 
syro-Semitic names, their more or less perfect Accadian designa- 
tions, which subsequently supplied their ideographic notation in 
texts in the Semitic language, the signs to which they correspond- 
ed in the zodiac, the indication of their protecting deities, and 
lastly, the cosmogonic myths referred to each one of them, at 
least, so far as it has been possible to restore them, for we are not 
absolutely certain of them in the case of more than five months 
out of the twelve. 

In the second table, the Assyrian nomenclature of the month 
is made parallel with the variations of the same nomenclature 
among the different Semitic peoples who adopted it, the Jews after 
\J the Captivity, the Samaritans, and the Aramaeans ; to which we 
have added the indication of the correspondence, dating from the 
reign of Seleucos Nicator, established between the months of the 
Macedonian year, imported by the Greek conquerors, and those of 
the Syrian Calendar. 

The third table shows the agreement existing in the beginning 
between the Arab months and those of the Syrian Calendar, an 
agreement which their significant names in Arabic show, since 
they refer to the phases of the seasons of a year beginning with 
the Autumnal Equinox. This agreement was, however, very 
early disturbed, and the names of the Arab months, for the 
greater part of the time, no longer corresponded to the season 
572 



FIFTH TABLE. 





LATER 

NOMENCLATURE. 


PRIMITIVE NOMENCLATURE. 


HEBREWS. 


PHOENICIANS. ASSYRIANS. 


1. Nisaii 


Am. 


' 




2. lyar. 


Ziv. 






3. Swan. 






Kuzalla. 


4. Tammvz. 

5. lb. 


■ 






6. Eliil. 








7. 2WH. 


Ethdnim. 






8. Marhesvdn. 


Bal. 


Bui. 




9. Kislev. 








10. fe&e^. 






TamJiiri. 


11. £e&a£ 








12. ^ar. 




1 


Names which occur 
v J at a still undeter- 
mined season of 
the year. 




Marpht or Mar- \ Mukur Hani. 

phem ( 1 ). 
Pa' 

i | 





i 1 ) Both these forms are found, one singular the other plural, in the 
Phoenician inscriptions. 



SIXTH TABLE. 





CORRESPONDING 

1 

MONTHS. 




SEASONS. 


HEBREWS. 


ASSYRIANS. 


ARAZS. 


1. Nisan. | 

2. Iyar. ) 


#%ir. 


i75wrM. 


Baby'-el-awwal. 


3. Sivan. ] 

4. Tammuz. i 


(>«*£. 


»• 


Qalf. 


5. Ab. | 

6. .MZ. J 


Horn. 


Hammu. 


Qaid. 


7. 72M. | 

8. Marhesvdn. ) 


£era*. 


Zaru. 


Raby'-el-tsdny. 


9. Kislev. "J 
10. raetfi. i 


Horeph. 


Harpu. 


Kharlf. 


11. Sebdt. } 

12. J.<iar. i 


Qor. 




Sitd. 





\J 



Appendices. 573 

in which these months actually fell. In fact, the Arabs have 
never been able to use anything but a vague lunar year of 354 
days, without a cycle of intercalation for the correction of its in- 
exactitude, in such wise that its months passed in succession 
through all the epochs of the Solar year, so that at the end of 
seventeen years the summer months fell in wintar, and vice-versa. 
The Syrians, on the other hand, from the time of the establish- 
ment of the rule of the Seleucides, and of the era which bears the 
name of these kings, corrected the irregularity of their lunar 
year by means of Callippus' cycle of intercalation, and subse- 
quently, at the accession of the Eoman Empire, transformed it 
into the Julian solar year, retaining the ancient names of their 
months, but modifying the number of days hitherto attributed to 
each of them. We have taken as basis of this table the important 
memoirs of Mahmoud Effendi, (Sur le calendrier arabe avant V 
idamisme, in the Journal Asiatique, 5th series, vol. XL, [Jan.- June, 
1858], p. 109-192), and of Sprenger ( Ueber den Kalender der Araber 
vor Mohammad, in the Zeitschrift der deutschen Morgenlamdischen 
Gesellschaft, vol. XIII., pp. 134-165). 

Side by side with these names of the months, used before the 
time of Mohammed, as we have succeeded in restoring them, we 
have placed the modifications of these names, as established by the 
Prophet, after he had decided that the hadj of Mecca should 
henceforth take place in a vague month, always the same, what- 
ever the season in which it might fall, instead of having, as be- 
fore, a fixed epoch in the seasons of the solar year, which, conse- 
quently never had the same monthly date in the displacement of 
the lunar year. 

The nomenclature thus modified by the Prophet for the appella- 
tions of three of the months, had, it is said, been established about 
two centuries before Mohammed, during the time of Kelab-ben- 
Morrah. We add to our table the instructions furnished by various 
Arab writers upon the nomenclatures more anciently used, which 
seem to have varied according to place, and also according to time. 
That most widely spread appears to have been the one which Albi- 
rouny and the lexicographers give us. It offers, moreover, a cer- 
tain number of variations in itself, interesting inasmuch as they 
refer to the displacement of the vague lunar year in the seasons of 
the solar year. Thus we find the name 'adel or 'adzel applied 
sometimes to the eighth, sometimes to the ninth, and sometimes to 
the tenth month, and this necessarily came about when one or the 



VJ 



574 The Beginnings of History. 

other of these months coincided with the Spring Equinox, plainly- 
designated by the signification of the name. 

We have drawn much of the material of our fourth table from 
Th. Benfey and Moritz Stern's admirable dissertation, Ueber die Mo- 
natsnamen einiger alter Vcelker, insbesondere der Perser, Cappado- 
cier, Juder undSyrer (Berlin, 1836), although the theory developed 
in this dissertation, of the Persian origin of the names of Jewish 
and Aramaic months, is henceforth untenable, as well as the 
system of a supposed primitive agreement between the Persian 
Calendar, and the Aramaic, artificially invented to justify this 
etymological origin. By way of a concordance between the Iranian 
and Semitic year, we have followed that given by the Calendar 
at present in use among the Parsees, which undoubtedly has 
always been the same. To this we have added the list of the 
months of the civil year of the Achsemenidse, corresponding exactly, 
under different names, to the Babylonian year, as we now know it 
through the Persian Cuneiform inscriptions, especially through 
that of Behistun. 

We have included in the same table the names of the Cappado- 
cian months, known through those Persian hemerologies the original 
Persian forms of which have been admirably restored by Benfey. 

The fifth table gathers together the rare traces which we have 
of one or two Semitic nomenclatures of the months, different from 
those the use of which finally became general in the basin of the 
Tigris and the Euphrates, in Syria and Palestine, and certainly 
older than they. These traces have been gathered from among 
the Hebrews before the Captivity, among the Phoenicians, and 
among the Assyrians. We have pointed out those terms of this 
nomenclature, the correspondence of which with early names is 
known, and also such as to which it is yet unknown. 

The last table of all, the sixth, is devoted to the explanation of 
the ancient Semitic system of the division of the year into six 
seasons of two months each, as found among the Hebrews at a very 
remote epoch (Gen. viii., 22), and among the ante-Islamic Arabs, 
some vestiges even having been observed among the Assyrians. 



APPENDIX V. 

THE CHALDEAN ACCOUNT OP THE DELUGE; TRANSCRIPTION 
OF THE TEXT WITH INTERLINEAR TRANSLATION. 



Column 1. 

8. Hasisatra ana sasu va izakkara ana Iztubar 
Hasisatra after that also said to Izdhubar (?) : 

9. " lupteka Iztubar amat 
Let me reveal to tliee Izdhubar (?) the narrative 

nigirti 
of my preservation, 

10. u pirigti sa Hani kdsa luqbika 
and the decision of the gods to thee let me tell ! 

11. alu Surippak alu sa tidusu 
The city of Shurippak city that thou knowest it 

ana Buratti i 1 ) haknu 

on the Euphrates exists, 

12. alu su . labir va .... Hani qirbusu 
city this is old and .... the gods in it 

13. ...... . ardusunu Hani rabuti 

....... their servant of the gods great. 

14 Anuv 

Anu, 

15 Beluv 

Bel, 

16 NIN.IB 

Sandan 

17. u [Ea~] belu la nakru 

and Ea lord unchangeable 

(i) Completed according to the new fragment recently brought to the 
British Museum by Mr. Hormuzd Rassam. 

575 



v/ 



576 The Beginnings of History. 

18. amatsunu yusannd ana qi[rib hit]ti va 
their command repeated in a dream and 

19. ana~\ku simtussu^ 1 ) sime va iqab\_bi yahi 

I his decree hearing and he said to me : 

20. Surippakitu mar Ubaratutu 

" Man of Shurippak, son of Ubaratutu, 

21. at\ta bird elippa uhharsa ..... 
thou build a vessel, complete it ... . 

22 apkura zir u napisti 

I will destroy the seed and the life. 

23. suliva zir napsati kalama 
Cause also to enter the seed of lives of all species 

ana libbi elippi 

into the interior of the vessel. 

24. elippu sa tabannusi atta 
The vessel that thou shalt build it, thou, 

25. neru ammat nisduda minatusa 
six hundred cubits in length its measure, 

26. sum ammat mitfyar rubuYsa u musalsa 
sixty cubits the rising of its breadth and its height. 

27 va apsi sdsi gullilsi 

also on the ocean this, cover it with a roof." 

28. anaku idi va azakkara ana Ea beliya 

I, I understood and I said to Ea my lord : 

29. elippu] bini sa taqba 

" the vessel to build which thou commandest, 

atta kiam 

thou, thus, 

30 anaku ibbuh 

I, I will make 

31 abli ummanu u ^libutuv 

the sons of the army ( 2 ) and the old men." 

32. \_Ea pdsu ibus va i\qabbi izakkara 

Ea his mouth made and he spoke, he said 
ana ardaiu ydtav 

to his servant myself : 



Q) The new fragment presents here, instead of this reading, ana]ku 
ik-hu 

( 2 ) That is, the young men in the strength of their years, at the age to 
carry arms. — 



Append 



ices. 



577 



33 taqabbassunutu 

thou shalt say to them, 

34 sa iziranni va 

who has abused me and 

35 lu . . . issakan eliya 

.... surely . . exists over me. 
36 kima kippati ....... 

.... like caverns (?) 

37 ludan elis u saplis .... 

I wish to judge above and below .... 

38. . . . e pihi elippa 

.... close the vessel ........ 

39 adanna sa asapparakkuvva 

, ... at the stated time that I will also make known 

[to thee, 

40. qiribsa eruvva bab elippi tirra 
within it enter and the door of the vessel bring back. 

41. ana libbisa SE.BARka SA.SUka SA.GAka 
To its interior thy grain, thy furniture, thy provisions, 

42. kaspa~\ka qinatka amatika u abli 
thy money, thy slaves, thy maid-servants and the sons 

umma\ni , 

of the army, 

43. puV] geri umam 
the cattle of the plains, the wild beasts 

mala usimmir va 

all those which I will gather and 

44. asap\parukkuva inaggaru 
I will also send thee, will guard 

45. At]rahasis pasu ibus va 
Hasisatra ( l ) his mouth made and 

46. izak~\kar ana Ea beli\}u 

he said to Ea his lord : 

47. la manma elippa ul 
11 No one a vessel not 

48. ina qaq'jqari egir 
On the keel I will fix 

49 tu lumur va 

.... that I may see and 



gen 
of the plains. 



babka 

thy door." 

iqab\bi 

spoke, 



eous 
has made 

u . . . ■ 








elippa . 
the vessel 









(i) The name is here spelled backward. 



578 



The Beginnings of History. 



50. 



51. 



52. 



elippu 

the vessel 

\_atta 

thou, 

which 



a ina qaqqari 

. . on the keel 
bird 
to construct it 
kiam, 
thus, 

ina 

in 



elippu 

the vessel 

sa taqbd 

which thou hast commanded, 



Column 2. 



VJ 



9. 
10. 
11. 
12. 



dannu .... 

Strong .... 
ina hansi 

on the fifth 
ina ganhisa 

In its covering 



yume 
day 



XIV 

fourteen 



XIV ina menuti 

fourteen in all 

addi lansi iasi . 

T placed its roof, it . 

urtakkibli ana 

I set sail in it on the 
ana sibuSu 

on the seventh ; 

qirbitsu aptarag 

its interior I divided 
sikkati me 

the gaps of the waters 

amqut 
I intercepted ; 



ina 
in 

imtahir , 
it counted 



sisu 
sixth, 



ana 
on 



..... nasa 

they rose. 

menuti egini cirutisu 
all its rafters, 
.... elisa 

.... above it. 
.... ecirli 
.... I covered it. 
suqutsu 
its stories 



aptarac 
I divided 



sumamsu 

the eighth ; 

qabli&a 

of its interior 



lu 
surely 



amur 
I saw 
saMati 
Three 
salsati 
three 
'salsati 
Three 



pangu 
the fissures 



sari 
sars 
sari 
sars 

sari 

sars 
izabbilu 
carried on their heads 



u 

and 
kupri 
of bitumen 

kupri 

of bitumen 

cabi 

of men 



the things lacking 
attabak 
I poured 
attabak 
I poured 
nds 
porters 
pissati 
the chests. 



addi 
I placed. 
ana Mri 

on the exterior, 
ana libbi 

on the interior. 
sussid sa 

of baskets who 



Appendices. 579 

13. esur sar pissati sa ikuluni iqqu 

I kept a sar of chests for the eating of the family, 

14. sane sari piSSati yupazziru 

two sars of chests divided among themselves 

malahi 
the sailors. 

15. ana .... uttibbih . alpi 
For .... I caused to be immolated oxen, 

16. as\takkan\ yumisamma 

I instituted for each day ; 

17. ina .... \kurun\nu piksati u karanu 

in .... of drink, casks and wine 

18 kima me ndri va 

like the waters of a river and 

19 kima UT.MI.A irgitiv va 

like the dust of the earth and 

20 pissati qati addi 

the chests my hand I carried. 

21 Samsi ra . . . . M elippu 

of the Sun the vessel 

gavirat 
was finished. 

22 rusuqu va 

strong and 

23. GIJR.MA.KAK.MES uslabbalu elil u 

the rigging of the vessel I had brought on above and 

sap US 
below. 

24 W]liku sinipatsu 

.... they reached to its two-thirds. 

25. nin iM eginsi nin ilu 

All that I had I collected it ; all that I possessed 
eginsi kaspa 

I collected it in silver, 

26. nin ilu eginli huraca 
all that I possessed I collected it in gold, 

27. nin iSu ecinU zir napsati 
all that I possessed I collected it (in) seed of lives 

kalama 
of all species. 



580 The Beginnings of History. 



28. 
29. 

30. 
81. 

32. 
33. 
34. 

35. 
36. 
37. 

J 38. 

39. 
40. 
41. 



uhteli ana 

I caused to ascend into 
u amatiya 

and my maid-servants 
pul ceri 

the cattle of the plains, 
a bli ummani 

the sons of the army 
adannu Sarrisu 

The fixed time the Sun 

yuzakkir 
he announced 

usaznana, 



elippi 
the vessel 



kola 
all 



qinatiya 
my slaves 



amain 
the wild beasts 
kalisunu 
all of them 
iskunavva 
made and 
kukkuru 
proclaiming : 

samutam 



gen 
of the plains, 
useli 
I caused to ascend. 



I will cause to rain 
erub ana libbi 
enter into 

adannu 
The fixed time 

yuzakkir 
he had announced 
usaznana 
I will make it rain 



from the sky 
elippi va 

the vessel and 
su ikrida 

this arrived, 

kukkuru 
proclaiming : 
samutam 
from the sky 



ma 
" In the 

kibati 
heavily 



lilati 
evening 



pihi 
shut 



babaka 
thy door. 



ina 
'In 

kibati 
heavily.' 



lilati 
the evening 



attari punasu 

I reached its evening. 

itaplusi 
to hold oneself on guard, 



sa yumi 

Of the day 

yumu ana 

the day for 

erub ana libbi 

I entered within 
ana pihe 

At the closing 
malahu 
the pilot 

ekalla attadin 

the abode I gave over 

Mu-seri-ina-namari 
Mu-sheri-ina-namari 
ilamma istu ihid 

arose from the foundations 
galimtuv 
black. 



puluhta isi 
fear I had 



elippi 

the vessel 

elippi 

of the vessel 



adi 
with 



va 
and 
ana 
to 



aptehe babi 

I shut my door. 
Buzur-sadi-rabi 
Buzur-shadi-rabi 



bule'su 
its being's. 



same 
of the sky, 



urpatuv 
cloud 



Appendices. 581 

42. Rammanu ina UbbiM irtammavva 
Rammanu in the midst of it thundered and 

43. Nabti, u Sarru illaku ina mafori 
Nabu and Shar marched in front 

44. illaku guzali sadu u 
they marched overwhelming the mountain and 

matuv 
the plain. 

45. nukulli Nergalu dannu massif 
The punishments Nergal the powerful drew after him ; 

46. illak NIN.IB mihri yulardi 
came Sandan before he overthrew. 

47. Annunaki ihhu diparati 
The Archangels of the earth carried destructions, 

48. ina namririsunu ihammatu matuv 

in their terrors they troubled the surface of the earth ; 

49. sa Rammani humurrassu ibdu same 

of Ramman his inundation swelled up to the sky 

50. la namru ana \_ceri qaqqaru] utturru 
without noise into desert the soil was changed. 

Column 3. 

1. . . . iz mati kima 

.... from the surface of the earth as ..... 

ih\_pu 
they broke, 

2. sik~\nat napisti [ultu] pan mdti a . . . . 
the beings living from the face of the earth 

3 dahli eli nisi yuba'u lame 

.... terrible over men it swelled up to heaven. 

4. ul immar ahu ahasu ul yutaddd. 
Not saw the brother his brother, not recognized each 

[other 
nisi ina lame 

men. In heaven 

5. Hani iptalhu abubavva 

the gods feared the waterspout and 

6. ittefj/SU item ana same ha 
sought a refuge ; they ascended to the heaven of 

Aniv 
Anu. 



582 The Beginnings of History. 



VJ 



10. 

1. 

12. 

13. 

14. 
15. 

18. 

17. 

18. 
19. 

20. 



manar 



Hani kima kalbi kunnunu ina 

The gods like dogs were motionless in 
rabgu 
they were laid. 
isissi Istar kima alidti 

Spoke Ishtar like a child. 
yunambi ilatu rabitu 

Pronounced the goddess great 

mulmullu ana iitti lu 

" Mankind to slime surely 

sa anaku 

that which myself 

aqbu 
I have announced 
ki aqbi ina 

As I have announced in 
limutta 
the misfortune, 
ana limni . . . . uk 

at the evil of my men 

aqbi va 

I have announced also, 



ina 

in presence 

limutta 
the misfortune. 



kamati 
a heap 



dabatsivva 
her discourse also : 
itur va 

has returned and 
Hani 
of the gods 



ma\iar 
the presence 



nisiya 



Hani 
of the gods 



dahla 
terrible 



anaku 
myself 
ki 
like 

Hani 
the gods 

baku 

are weeping 

Hani ina 

The gods on 

katma 
were covered 
U'sati urra 

six days 

illak 



umma 

mother 

mari 

the young 

Supar 
because of 
ittiya 
with me 



ullada 
I have brought forth 
nuni 
of fishes 



nisuai va 

my man and 
yumalla tamtavva 

they fill the sea and 
Anunnaki 
the Archangels of the earth 



Mm 
the wind, 
isappanu 
prevailed. 



subti asbi ina bikiti 

the seats were seated in tears ; 
saptasunu . . abu afereti 

their lips . . . . . future things. 

u musati 

and nights 

abubu mefru 

the waterspout, the deluge of rain 



Appendi 



ices. 



583 



21. 



22. 



23. 



24, 



25. 



26. 



27. 



28. 



sibii 

The seventh 

iktasal 

ceased, 



yumu ini 
day at 

abubu 
the waterspout 



kima 
like 



3a imtahgu 

which had assailed 
inuh tamtu 

was appeased ; the sea 
u abubu 

and the waterspout 
appalsa tamata 

I looked at the sea 
u kullat teniseti 

and the whole of mankind 
kima uribe pagrat 

like seaweed the corpses 

apte nappasavva 

I opened the window and 

dur appiya 

my face. 

uktammis 
I was overcome with sadness 
abakki 



kasadi 
the approach 
dahla 
terrible 

haialti 
an earthquake 
yusharir va 

began to dry and 
ikla 
came to an end. 
sakin qulu 

paying attention, 
itura 
had returned 
yusallu 
floated. 
urru imtahag 

the light 



zunnu 
the rain 



saru 
the wind 



ana 
to 



struck 



titti 
lime: 



eli 
on 



va 
and 



attasab 
I seated myself, 



I wept ; 

29. eli dur 

on my 

appalis 
I looked at 



30 



appiya illaka 
face came 

kiprdti 
the regions 



31. ana 
toward the twelve 

nagu 
continent. 

32. ana mat 
Over the country 



dimai 
my tears. 

patu tamti 

bounded by the sea ; 
ina menuti ite 
in all points of the horizon 



la 
no 



Nizir 
of Nizir 



itemid 
was carried 



elippu 
the vessel. 



33. ladu Nizir 
The mountain of Nizir 

nali ul 

pass above not 

34. istin yumu sana 
one day a second 



elippu 
the vessel 
iddin[bi 
allowed it ; 
yumu ladu 

day the mountain 



icbat 
held 



va 
and 



ana 
to 



Nizir (idem) 
of Nizir (idem) 



584 

35. 



The Beginnings of History. 



36. 
37. 

38. 

39. 
40. 

41. 



42 



43 



salla 

the third 

Nizir 

of Nizi: 

franiu 

the fifth, 



yumu 
day 

(idem) 
(idem) ; 



rib a 
the fourth 



yumu 
day 



Sadu 
the mountain 



sissa sadu 

the sixth the mountain 
siba yuma ina kasadi 

the seventh day at the approach 

va summata umassar 
and a dove I loosened ; 
ituravva 
it turned and 



usegi 
I caused to go forth 
summatu 
the dove, 



Nizir (idem) 
of Nizir (idem) ; 



illik 
went 



manzazu ul 

a place where to rest not 
usegi va 

I caused to go forth and 

illik sinuntu 

went the swallow, 



ipassuvva 
it found 
sinunta 
a swallow 
ituravva 
it turned and 



issijira 
and it returned. 
umassar 
I loosened ; 



VJ 



manzazu 
a place where to rest 

usegi 

I caused to go forth 

illik aribi 

went the raven 

imur va 

it saw and 

44. ikkal isahhi 

it ate, it rested, 



ul 
not 
va 
and 



ipassuvva 
it found and 



issihra 
it returned. 



va 
and 



aribi 
a raven 



qarura 
the carrion 



umassar 
I loosened ; 



sa 
of the 



me 
waters 



itarri 
it turned, 



ul 
not 



45. 



46. 



47. 



usegi 
I caused to go forth 
attaqi 



va 
also 



ana 
toward 



issihra 

it returned. 

irbitti Mri 

the four winds ; 



niqa 



I sacrificed a sacrifice. 
askun surqinu 

I made the pyre of the holocaust 
sadi 
of the mountain ; 

sibitti u sibitti adagur 

seven by seven of the measured vases 



ina eli ziggurrat 
on the peak 



uktin 
I disposed ; 



Appendices. 



585 



48. ina saplisunu itabak 

in beneath them 1 spread 
ballukka 
juniper. 

49. Hani eginu irisa 
The gods smelled the odor, 

irisa tdba 

the odor good ; 

50. Hani kima zumbe eli 
the gods like flies above 

iptahru 
gathered. 

51. ultu 
from 

52. issi 
raised 

hi 



qam 
reeds, 



enna 
cedar 



and 



Hani 
the gods 



egtnu 
smelled 



53. 



bel 
the master 



niqi 
of the sacrifice 



Gods 



ullanuvva Rubatu ina 

afar also the Great Goddess at 
NUM. ME S rabuti la Anuv 

the zones great that Anu 
guhisu[nu 
their glory. 

annuti la abnu ugnu mahriya 

these indeed crystal before me 
amsi 
will I cease ; 

Column 4. 



kasadisu ( x ) 
her approach 
ibusu 
has made 



yumi annuti ahsusavva 

days these I prayed ardently 
amsi 
will I cease : 
Hani lillikuni ana 

"The gods may they come to 
Beluv ai illika 

Bel never he will not come 



ana daris 
and for ever 



ai 
never 



ai 
never 



surqini 
my pyre of holocaust ! 
ana surqini 

to my pyre of 

[holocaust ! 



5. 



a's'su la 

because not 
abubu 
the waterspout 
u nisiya 

and my men 



imtalku 
he has controlled himself 



va 
and 



iskunu 
he made 



vmnu 
he has reckoned 



ana 
for 



karasi 
the abyss. 



(!) Copyist's error for ka$adi$a. 



586 The Beginnings of History, 

6. ultu ullanuvva Beluv ina kasadisu 
From afar also Bel at his approach 

7. imur elippa ictebat Beluv libbati 
saw the vessel, stood still Bel, of anger 

imtali sa Hani Igigi 

he was full against the gods (and) the celestial 

[Archangels. 



aiumma 
"No one 

nisii 

man 
NIN.IB 
Sandan 

izakkar 

he said 



napisti 
alive : 



shall come out 
ina karasi 

in the abyss ! " 

pasu ibus 

his mouth made 

ana quradi 

to the warrior 



at 
never 



va 
and 



10. 



11. 



12. 



13. 



14. 



mannuvva 
" Who also 
u Ea 

and Ea 

Ea 
Ea 



sa la 
if it be not 



pasu 



knows 
ibus va 
his mouth made and 
Belu 
Bel: 



Ea 

Ea 

va 

and 

iqbi 



Belt 
Bel: 

amatu 
the will 
kala 
all 
izakkar 



ibluf, 
shall live 



iqbi 
he spake 



ibannu 
forms ? 



ana quradu 



he spake ; he said to the warrior 



atta 
Thou, 
M(i) 
as 



abkal 
herald 

tamtalik 



Hani 
of the gods, 
va 



-\J 



15. 



16. 



la 

not thou hast controlled 
tds\kun 
thou hast made. 
bel Kite emid hitasu 

The sinner loaded with his sin, 

qillatsu 
with his blasphemy. 

rumme ai 

Have thou for good pleasure never 
sudutu ai 

the faith never 



qura\_du 
warrior, 

abubu 



thyself also the waterspout 



bel qillati emid 

the blasphemer loaded 



ib batik 
may it be infringed 



(!) The repetition of hi M, which appears in the original tablet, seems to 
be only an error of the scribe. 



Appendices. 



587 



17. 



18. 



19. 



neau 

the lions 



ammoku taskunu abuba 

instead that thou shouldst make a waterspout, 
litbavva nisi ligahhir 

let them come and men let them cut off ! 

ammoku taskunu abuba barbaru 

instead that thou shouldst make a waterspout the hyenas 
litbavva nisi ligahhir 

let them come and men let them cut off! 
ammaku taskunu abuba 

instead that thou shouldst make a waterspout 

husahhu liskakin va mata 

the famine let it be, and and the face of the earth 

lis 

let it ! 

ammaku taskunu 

instead that thou shouldst make 

Dibbarra litbavva nisi 

let Dibbarra come and the men 
, anaku ul apta 

I not I have exposed 

Ham rabuti 

of the gods great ; 
22. Atrahasis sunata yusaprisuvva 

Hasisatra a dream has interpreted and 
Hani isnie 

of the gods has understood." 

eninna va miliksu milku ilamma 

Behold that also his counsel was arrested mounted 

Beluv ana Ubbi elippi 

Bel to the interior of the vessel ; 



20. 



21 



abuba 

a waterspout 

lis .... ' 

let him . . . . ! 

pirigti 

the decision 



pirigti 
the decision 



23. 



va yultelanni 

and made me rise, 
yustaqmig 
he made to be joined 



24. igbat qatiya 
he took my hand 

25. yusteli 
he made to rise, 

idiya 
at my side. 

26. Uput putni va 
He turned around us and 

qasrinni iqarrabannasi 

our group he approached us : 



yasi 
myself ; 
zinnisti 
my wife 



izzaz 
stopped still ; 



ana 
toward 



588 The Beginnings of History. 



28. 



29. 



30. 



tna pana 
"Hitherto 

eninna 
behold that 
evil kima 
live like 
lH asib 

will dwell 

pi 
the mouth 
ilqinni 
They took me 
pt 
the mouth 



u 
and 

nasi 



Hasisatra 
Hasisatra (was) 
va Hasisatra 

also Hasisatra 
Hani 
the gods are lifted up 
va Hasisatra 

also Hasisatra 

• ndri 
of the rivers." 
va ina 

and in a 

ndri 
of the rivers 



amelutuvva 
perishable humanity and 
zinnistusu M 
his wife to 
va 
and 
ruqi ina 

far away at 



ruqi ina 

secluded place at 
yustesibuinni 
they made me reside." 



END OF THE APPENDICES. 



VJ 



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a map. 



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The EEA of the PEOTESTANT REVOLUTION. By F. Seebohh, 

Author of "The Oxford Reformers — Colet, Erasmus, More." 

The CRUSADES. By the Rev. G. W. Cox, M. A., Author of the "History of 
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The THIRTY YEARS' WAR, 1618—1648. By Samuel Rawson Gardiner. 

The HOUSES of LANCASTER and YORK: with the CONQUEST and 
LOSS of FRANCE. By James Gairdner, of the Public Record Office. 

The FRENCH REVOLUTION and FIRST EMPIRE; an Historical 
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The AG-E OF ELIZABETH. By the Rev. M. Creighton, M.A. 

The PURITAN REVOLUTION. By J. Langton Sanford. 

The FALL of the STUARTS; and WESTERN EUROPE from 1678 
to 1697. By the Rev. Edward Hale, M. A., Assist. Master at Eton. 

The EARLY PLANTAGENETS and their relation to the HISTORY of 
EUROPE; the foundation and growth of CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. 
By the Rev. Wm. Stubbs, M. A., etc., Professor of Modern History in the Univer- 
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The BEGINNING of the MIDDLE AGES; CHARLES the GREAT 
and ALFRED; the HISTORY of ENGLAND in its connection with that of 
EUROPE in the NINTH CENTURY. By the Very Rev. R. W. Church, M. A. ' 

The AGE of ANNE. By Edward E. Morris, M. A., Editor of the Series. 

The NORMANS IN EUROPE. By the Rev. A. H. Johnson, M.A. 

EDWARD III. By the Rev. W. Warburton, M. A. 

FREDERICK the GREAT and the SEVEN YEARS' WAR, By 

F. W. Longman, of Bailie College, Oxford. 

The EPOCH of REFORM, 1830 to 1850. By Justin McCarthy. 

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A New Edition, Library Style. 



Sfr gixfom of (ivmt. 

By Prof. Dr. EENST 0UB.TIUS. 

Translated by Adolphus William Ward, M. A., Fellow of St. Peters College, Cam 
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UNIFORM WITH MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME, 
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' Curtius's History of Greece is similar in plan and purpose to Mommsen's 
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the great masterpieces of historical literature. Avoiding the minute de- 
tails which overburden other similar works, it groups together in a very 
picturesque manner all the important events in the history of this king- 
dom, which has exercised such a wonderful influence upon the world's 
civilization. The narrative of Prof. Curtius's work is flowing and ani- 
mated, and the generalizations, although bold, are philosophical and 
sound. 

CRITICAL NOTICES. 

" Professor Curtius's eminent scholarship is a sufficient guarantee for the trustworthiness 
of his history, while the skill with which he groups his facts, and his effective mode of narrat- 
ing them, combine to render it no less readable than sound. Prof. Curtius everywhere 
maintains the true dignity and impartiality of history, and it is evident his sympathies are 
on the side of justice, humanity, and progress." — London Athenaum. 

" We cannot express our opinion of Dr. Curtius's book better than by saying that it may 
be fitly ranked with Theodor Mommsen's great work." — London Spectator. 

^As an introduction to the study of Grecian history, no previous work is comparable to 
the present for vivacity and picturesque beauty, while in sound learning and accuracy of 
statement it is not inferior to the elaborate productions which enrich the literature of the 
ape." — .V. Y. Daily Tribwie. 

"The History of Greece is treated by Dr. Curtius so broadly and freely in the spirit of 
the nineteenth century, that it becomes in his hands one of the worthiest and most instruct- 
ive branches of study for all who desire something more than a knowledge of isolated facts 
for their education. This translation ought to become a regular part of the accepted course 
of reading for young men at college, and for all who are in training for the free political 
life of our country." — N. Y. Evening Post. 

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